A short-term longitudinal study linking adolescents' metacognition, learning, and social friendship networks

Abstract

Adolescents' metacognitive skills and social relationships play key roles in learning but are often studied in isolation. This study investigated the links between metacognition, learning performance, and classroom friendship networks in a sample of 136 seventh-grade students from Switzerland (53.8% female; mean age 13.8 years) assessed at two time points 3 months apart. Metacognition was measured on-task. Monitoring was assessed through confidence judgments, and control through decisions about what to restudy and which responses to submit or withdraw from grading. Participants learned the meanings of Japanese characters (“Kanji”), self-tested memorization, monitored their performance, made restudy decisions, and submitted selected responses. Social friendship networks were measured with friendship nominations within classrooms. Results showed that decision accuracy strongly predicted Kanji task scores at both time points. Monitoring-based restudy became a significant predictor of task scores at the second measurement, indicating that participants who strategically restudied items for which confidence was initially low achieved higher scores. No evidence was found for friends influencing adolescents' metacognitive skills. Friends did, however, become more similar in task performance over time, suggesting that peer influence may shape learning processes other than the investigated metacognitive processes. These findings highlight the importance of metacognitive control and friendship dynamics for adolescents' learning outcomes.