Kindergarteners` Ability to use Retrieval Time During Recognition for Self-evaluating Their Learning and Remembering

• In Event: 3-225 - Psychology Meets Education: How Children Gain from Self-regulated Learning

Integrative Statement

Even young children experience situations in which they are uncertain: game contexts in which they have to memorize details or make a decision based on incomplete information. Although the developmental literature on children`s self-evaluative skills consistently reveals that rudimentary self-regulatory skills exist, it is yet unknown based on which kinds of experiences or cues young children are able to actively self-evaluate their learning and remembering. One candidate factor is the choice latency or children`s hesitation. In the domain of general psychology, it is well established that the longer an individual hesitates in a forced choice task when attempting to recognize previously learned information, the lower certainty will be reported. The to-be-presented study is one of the first to use time-based measures of recognition to explore their impact on self-evaluative judgements in 5- to 7-year-olds.

Hypotheses. We expected that children`s correct recognition would be faster than incorrect recognition. However, we also hypothesized that 5- to 7-year-olds are not yet able to use the experience of hesitating during recognition to guide their self-evaluations. Although we predicted that children`s self-evaluative judgments would be overall more optimistic for correct than for incorrect recognition, it would not be possible to predict self-evaluations based on choice latencies in recognition.

Sample and method. A sample of N = 131 children, divided in two age groups, were included in the study (N = 65 younger children; 45% girls; mean age= 63 months – N = 66 older children; 42% girls; mean age = 76 months). Children completed a paired-associate learning task. After a learning phase, there was a recognition phase in which they were to select a response out four alternatives. For the self-evaluations, participants were asked to indicate their certainty or uncertainty on the correctness of their chosen alternative on a 7-point thermometer scale.

Results and discussion. Results confirm our hypotheses: both younger and older children took longer to select a response when this response turned out to be incorrect (F(1,125) = 8.08, p = .005, η 2p = .06; see Figure 1). This suggests that the experience of hesitation is already present in this young age. Younger and older children were reliably able to report higher certainty for correct than for incorrect response selections indicative of self-evaluative skills (F(1,128) = 31.95, p = .000, η 2p = .20; see Figure 2). Interestingly however, there was no systematic relationship between choice latencies in the recognition test and later reported uncertainty. This indicates that children were not using (or not yet able to use) the experience of hesitating in the recognition phase for their self-evaluations. In fact, the results suggest that cue use may potentially be a driving force for self-regulated learning behavior. Implications for improving young children`s self-evaluative skills in educational contexts will also be discussed.


Authors

• Claudia Roebers, Bern University
  Presenting Author

• Eva Aeschlimann, University of Bern
  Non-Presenting Author