Use nonverbal wagering paradigms for metacognitive interventions with preschool children, targeting domain-specific strategies¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 2 studies (1 associational, 1 qualitative), q2–q3 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article recommends that because children can report uncertainty nonverbally by at least age 5, "nonverbal paradigms, such as wagering, could be used in metacognitive interventions with preschool children." Because metacognitive skill and bias are domain-specific in early childhood, the authors further suggest that "generic interventions to improve children's metacognitive accuracy might be less effective than training specific metacognitive strategies that depend on the content of the learning materials."

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Children must be able to make the target discrimination and place wagers nonverbally, as in the wagering task used here.

Constraints¶

• Children's metacognitive judgments were still imperfect, with overconfidence for numerical and underconfidence for emotion judgments; the article states generic interventions may be less effective than content-specific training.

Target Learners¶

• preschool and early-childhood learners (ages 5-8)

Target Learning Goals¶

• metacognitive monitoring of one's own uncertainty, particularly in mathematics

Claims¶

• Metacognitive sensitivity is domain-specific in early childhood: number-domain and emotion-domain measures are uncorrelated [+W]
• Metacognitive sensitivity increases with age between 5 and 8 years, similarly across number and emotion domains [+W]
• Children aged 5 to 8 show metacognitive sensitivity in a nonverbal wagering task, betting more on correct than incorrect discriminations [+W]
• Young children with limited vocabulary express metacognitive knowledge through behavioral and nonverbal expressions as well as verbalizations [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Vo, V. Y., Li, R., Kornell, N., Pouget, A., & Cantlon, J. F. (2014). Young Children Bet On Their Numerical Skills: Metacognition in the Numerical Domain. Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614538458