Use metacognitive prompts that reflect cognitive processes without asking for a performance evaluation¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (4 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Because confidence ratings may disproportionately assist high-confidence individuals and reinforce inaccurate confidence-related beliefs, the authors recommend investigating prompts that require learners to reflect on their cognitive processes, such as "rating how deeply you thought about a problem", and on their cognitive performance without actually providing an evaluation of that performance. This strategy aims to capture the monitoring benefits of metacognitive prompting while avoiding the belief-reinforcing reactivity observed with explicit confidence ratings.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Prompts must avoid explicitly referring to confidence or requiring an evaluative judgement of performance

Constraints¶

• The extent to which reactivity effects can be attributed to the specific wording of confidence ratings is not yet clear; the recommendation is stated as needing investigation

Target Learners¶

• learners in classroom environments, particularly those with low confidence in their ability

Target Learning Goals¶

• accurate metacognitive monitoring of performance during problem solving and learning

Affordances¶

• Two Stage Model Cr Reactivity

Claims¶

• Confidence ratings improve short-term accuracy for high prospective-confidence older adults but impair it for low prospective-confidence adults [+W]
• Eliciting confidence ratings produces no significant difference in overall accuracy on a timed reasoning task in older adults [+W]
• Eliciting confidence ratings leads to poorer metacognitive monitoring in older adults [+W]
• Confidence ratings shift time allocation on a timed task in opposite directions for high- versus low-confidence older adults [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Double, K. S., & Birney, D. P. (2018). Reactivity to confidence ratings in older individuals performing the latin square task. Metacognition and Learning, 13, 309–326. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-018-9186-5