Metacognitive monitoring in early elementary school-aged children: Task dependency in monitoring judgments, task consistency in monitoring behaviours

Children’s metacognitive monitoring is typically considered as a domain general skill that can be applied in different tasks and situations. However, this assumption lacks empirical evidence as few studies tested whether children’s accuracy of monitoring judgments as well as their monitoring behaviours are consistent across tasks. It is also not clear if children who provide more accurate monitoring judgments also show more frequent monitoring behaviours. In the current research study 53 elementary school children’s metacognitive monitoring was assessed with four tasks: on the one hand, the accuracy of children’s monitoring judgments was assessed with two computer-based tasks (one task required monitoring of memory and the other task required monitoring of reaction times); on the other hand, the frequency with which they engaged in monitoring behaviours was assessed with two construction tasks. Correlational analysis showed that there was no significant association between children’s monitoring judgment accuracies. In turn, children’s monitoring behaviour on two construction tasks was significantly positively associated. Intercorrelations between children’s monitoring judgment accuracies and monitoring behaviours showed that children who more accurately monitored their reaction time showed significantly more monitoring behaviour when working on construction tasks. Conversely, children’s monitoring judgment accuracy on a memory task was not significantly associated with their monitoring behaviour. These findings suggest that the processes underlying children’s monitoring judgments may be task specific, whereas their tendency to engage in monitoring behaviours may be domain general. Implications for promoting metacognitive monitoring are discussed.