The Effect of Instructions on Reaction Times when Making Monitoring Judgments

• In Event: Cognitive Processes in Learning

Abstract

Accurate monitoring judgments are important for effective choices during self-regulated learning. To acquire deeper understanding of processes underlying monitoring judgments, reaction times were measured when learners predicted comprehension test performance. Students (65 primary and 50 secondary education) studied idioms and provided delayed comprehension judgments, or first generated sentences with the idioms before providing those judgments. For monitoring judgments predicting low comprehension test performance, reaction times were longer when making judgments without the sentence generation instruction. This might indicate that sentence generation instructions lead to a focus on availability of a situation model for the studied information, instead of an attempt to literally retrieve the studied content. Findings can lead to improved insights in effects of instructions to foster metacognitive skills.

Authors

• Anique De Bruin, Erasmus University

• Mariette H Van Loon, Maastricht University

• Tamara Van Gog, Erasmus University

• Jeroen J.G. Van Merrienboer, Maastricht University