Metacognitive Judgments and Control of Study

Abstract

Recent evidence indicates that people's judgments of their own learning are causally related to their study behavior and not epiphenomenal. I argue here that people use these metacognitions in an effort to selectively study material in their own region of proximal learning. First they attempt to eliminate materials that are already well learned. Then they progress successively from studying easier to more difficult materials. Successful implementation of this metacognitively guided strategy enhances learning. The necessary components are, first, that the metacognitions be accurate, and second, that the appropriate choices are implemented for study. With these parts in place, the individual is in position to effectively take control of his or her own learning.

Fig. 1

The relation between judgments of learning and study choice that are postulated by the region-of-proximal-learning framework. This framework says that people should decline study of the extremely high judgment-of-learning items, as shown on the far right of the graph, because these items have, almost certainly, already been mastered. If already-mastered items are eliminated from consideration, study choice should decrease as people's judgments of learning decrease, as shown. People should strongly prefer to choose items for study that are easy (have high but not extremely high judgments of learning), but are not perceived to be mastered. The region of proximal learning—where a small amount of time and effort should yield maximal learning gains—consists of items in the dark colored band, in which items are perceived to be close to being learned but are not yet thought to have been mastered.

Fig. 2

Study perseverance in the region-of-proximal-learning framework. In this framework, study of a given item stops when the perceived rate of learning approaches zero. The inset boxes show the functions, over time, of the person's perceived rates of learning for very difficult, fairly difficult, slightly difficult, and easy items. The triangles in each inset indicate the time at which the perceived learning function goes to zero and, hence, the time at which study will stop for that particular level of item difficulty. As is shown in the large bottom panel, the result is that the time to stop as a function of item difficulty varies, but not necessarily in a monotonic way. For extremely difficult (unlearnable) items the time to stop may be quite short, because the perceived rate of learning reaches zero quickly.