Caution when prompting young children to pre-monitor all answer alternatives before choosing¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (2 for, 3 mixed) · 1 study (1 causal), q2 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article's results advise against assuming that prompting children to rate confidence in every alternative before answering will improve monitoring accuracy: in this study such prompts "seemed to increase rather than decrease overconfidence in young children". The authors instead highlight the promising minority pattern of confidence downregulation and call for research on age ranges or subgroups that may systematically benefit from pre-monitoring.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Any implementation should be evaluated against the possibility that early high confidence judgments reinforce the preferred answer

Constraints¶

• Observed in kindergartners and second graders on a paired associates recognition task with familiar animal stimuli; the authors note familiar stimuli may have reinforced the confirmation bias

Target Learners¶

• kindergartners (5-6 years)
• second graders (7-8 years)

Target Learning Goals¶

• accurate metacognitive monitoring
• reduced overconfidence

Affordances¶

• Memory Metamemory Interplay Overconfidence

Claims¶

• Pre-monitoring judgments before recognition increase rather than decrease overconfidence in kindergartners and second graders [+M]
• Pre-monitoring does not significantly improve children's relative monitoring accuracy (discrimination between correct and incorrect answers) [+M]
• A minority of item judgments show downregulation of confidence after pre-monitoring, suggesting differentiated evaluation can sometimes trigger more accurate monitoring [~W]
• Children's recognition choices overwhelmingly follow the alternative given the highest pre-monitoring judgment [~W]
• Pre-monitoring and retrospective confidence judgments are highly consistent, with most agreement at the highest scale level regardless of correctness [~W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Sophie Wacker, Claudia M. Roebers. (2024). Motivating children to (pre)monitor: positive effects on monitoring accuracy? Metacognition and Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-023-09351-0