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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Decades of research have consistently documented that children play an active role in their own learning. Children gain much of their knowledge from largely unstructured contexts in which they can determine how to engage with novel information (e.g., while playing, exploring, or even doing homework). Research has traditionally emphasized the role of executive control processes in understanding children’s self-regulation, but recent research has attempted to broaden this conceptualization.

The proposed symposium integrates research from four different research approaches (conducted in four different labs across three different countries), to contribute to a new understanding of the psychological processes that underlie children’s self-regulated learning. This understanding is necessary in the context of education, where teachers and educators are tasked with supporting children’s capacity to build new knowledge. Study 1 aims to understand how children seek and use reliable cues from their environment to boost their performance. Study 2 emphasizes the importance of retrieval fluency as way in which children gain insight about their learning. Study 3 provides a demonstration of the power of curiosity for children’s intrinsic motivation to learn. Finally, Study 4 points to the opportunity of self-determination of studying practices (e.g., in what order and at what pace to study) as powerful means to facilitate learning.

Overall, the presenters will highlight the commonalities and differences of these factors for active, self-regulated learning, and will draw connections with education practices that are consistent or inconsistent with these emerging principles.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chairs

• Diana Selmeczy, University of California, Davis

• Claudia Roebers, Bern University

Individual Presentations

• “Should I use your hint?” How Children Integrate Hints into Their Memory Decisions - Presenting Author: Diana Selmeczy, University of California, Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Alireza Kazemi, University of California, Davis; Non-Presenting Author: Simona Ghetti, University of California, Davis

• Kindergarteners` Ability to use Retrieval Time During Recognition for Self-evaluating Their Learning and Remembering - Presenting Author: Claudia Roebers, Bern University; Non-Presenting Author: Eva Aeschlimann, University of Bern

• States of Curiosity Modulate Learning in Childhood and Adolescence - Presenting Author: Yana Fandakova, Max Planck Institute for Human Development; Non-Presenting Author: Matthias Gruber, Cardiff University

• The Emergence of an Active Learning Advantage for Episodic Memory - Presenting Author: Douglas Markant, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Non-Presenting Author: Todd Gureckis, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Fei Xu, University of California-Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Azzurra Ruggeri, Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development Berlin; Technical University Munich (School of Education)