Students use invested mental effort as a cue when judging their learning, and self-rated mental effort is negatively related to judgments of learning¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2020 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The fluency bias indicates that the effort students invest in learning is used as a cue during monitoring, and self-rated mental effort is negatively related to judgments of learning. → de Bruin 2020

Evidence¶

de Bruin 2020¶

de Bruin, A. B. H., Roelle, J., Carpenter, S. K., & Baars, M. (2020). Synthesizing Cognitive Load and Self-regulation Theory: a Theoretical Framework and Research Agenda. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09576-4

q2 · i? · theoretical · r3

The editorial's review of monitoring research (RQ1 section) reports that effort functions as a monitoring cue: "self-rated mental effort is found to be negatively related to judgments of learning (JOLs)". No effect size is printed here; the special-issue meta-analysis by Baars et al. is summarized separately.

"The fluency bias indicates that the effort students invest in learning seems to be used as a cue during monitoring. Moreover, self-rated mental effort is found to be negatively related to judgments of learning (JOLs)"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Subjective effort ratings are affected by invalid cues and only weakly valid as cues to judged learning outcomes — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Perceived mental effort serves as a cue for monitoring judgments, which mediate the effort–outcome relation (David et al., 2024 meta-analysis) — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Perceived effort ratings are metacognitive judgments based on heuristic cue processing and prone to bias — related
• The relationship between invested mental effort and self-assessed understanding is weak and inconsistent, with most correlations non-significant and mixed directions — related
• Students tend to rely on non-diagnostic cues when judging their own performance, resulting in inaccurate judgments — related
• Perceived mental effort has a negative indirect association with learning outcomes, mediated by monitoring judgments (β = -0.05) — related
• Perceived mental effort is negatively associated with monitoring judgments (β = -0.19) in a meta-analytic structural equation model — related