Mariëtte van Loon

University of Zurich | UZH · Psychologisches Institut

This study aims to understand individual differences between children in metacognitive monitoring and control processes and the developmental trajectories of metacognition over one year. Three indicators of procedural metacognition were used: monitoring accuracy (discrimination of confidence judgments between correct and incorrect test responses),...

It is unknown how multiple components of on-task regulation of learning affect task performance in school children. This research aimed to acquire insights into the interrelations between children's metacognitive monitoring, regulation of learning, and task performance. Three components of on-task regulation of learning were investigated: allocatio...

The present study investigated age-related development in children's metacognitive self-monitoring skills; eight-year-olds (N = 140) and ten-year-olds (N = 164) were compared. Children learned paired associates and completed a recognition test. Two types of monitoring judgments were compared: predictions and postdictions of performance. To investig...

Many children have difficulties with accurate self-monitoring and effective regulation of study, and this may cause them to miss learning opportunities. In the classroom, teachers play a key role in supporting children with metacognition and learning. The present study aimed to acquire insights into how teachers’ cognitive and metacognitive strateg...

Metacognitive monitoring is a significant predictor of academic achievement and is assumed to be related to language competencies. Hence, it may explain academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students. We compared metacognitive monitoring (in terms of resolution) between native and non-native speaking fourth graders...

Two independent data sets assessing children's metacognitive monitoring abilities were used to explore the psychometric properties of classical and often-used monitoring measures in primary school age. Theoretically, monitoring is an overarching skill that helps individuals evaluate task mastery, strategy use, and correctness of performance. Monito...

Children’s monitoring of learning is often inaccurate, and subsequent control of learning ineffective, making research on potential effects of feedback on metacognition very relevant. This chapter gives an overview of research on effects of feedback on metacognition in kindergarten and elementary school. We first introduce how feedback may affect l...

This study investigated age-dependent improvements of monitoring and control in 7/8- and 9/10-year-old children. We addressed prospective (judgments of learning and restudy selections) and retrospective metacognitive skills (confidence judgments and withdrawal of answers). Children (N = 305) completed a paired-associate learning task twice, with a...

For (facilitating) effective learning from texts, students and teachers need to accurately monitor students’ comprehension. Monitoring judgments are accurate when they correspond to students’ actual comprehension. Accurate monitoring enables accurate (self-)regulation of the learning process, i.e., making study decisions that are in line with monit...

Recognizing errors is challenging for children. In the educational context, inaccurate self-monitoring and a lack of error recognition can hinder learning and successful preparation for elementary school. This study aimed to investigate whether kindergartners’ monitoring accuracy can benefit from feedback, by investigating effects of performance fe...

Background: In medical physiology, educators and students face a serious challenge termed misconceptions. Misconceptions are incorrect ideas that do not match current scientific views. Accordingly, they have shown to hamper teaching and learning of physiological concepts. Conceptual Change Theory forms the basis of new teaching and learning practi...

This study investigated elementary school children’s development of monitoring and control when learning from texts. Second (N = 138) and fourth (N = 164) graders were tested in the middle (T1) and end (T2) of the school year. The study focused on the cross-sectional and longitudinal development of monitoring and control, and aimed to investigate t...

The article Development of Children’s monitoring and control when learning from texts: effects of age and test format, written by Martina Steiner, Mariëtte H. van Loon, Natalie S. Bayard and Claudia M. Roebers, was originally published electronically on September 7, 2019 without open access.

Children find it challenging to self-monitor the quality of their own test responses, and are typically overconfident. Inaccurate self-monitoring may not only be due to a metacognitive deficit, but also to self-protective biases. Therefore, monitoring peer performance and detecting others' errors may be easier than monitoring oneself. This study in...

Although the literature consistently documents strong improvements in metacognitive skills over the elementary school years, relatively little is known about the mechanisms fueling these developments. One factor that is being discussed in the literature and targeted in the present approach is cue utilization. Cue utilization quantifies the degree t...

For regulation of text learning to be effective, students need to accurately monitor their text comprehension. Similarly, to provide adaptive instruction, teachers need to accurately monitor and regulate students’ text comprehension. Performing generative activities prior to monitoring has been suggested to provide students with diagnostic cues, im...

People’s self-monitoring of their learning has extensive impact on generating opportunities for professional development. Self-monitoring before, during, and after completing work-related tasks affects decision making, learning behavior, strategy use, and learning motivation. When self-assessing, a person compares performance against some standard....

The current study investigated kindergarteners and second graders’ ability to monitor and evaluate their own and a virtual peer’s performance in a paired-associate learning task. Participants provided confidence judgments (CJs) for their own responses and performance-based judgments (judgments provided after receiving feedback on their performance)...

Elementary school learners are typically highly confident when judging accuracy of their test responses, relatively independent of whether these are correct. While feedback has been shown to improve accuracy of adults' and adolescents' self-evaluations and subsequent self-regulation, little is known about beneficial effects for elementary school ch...

Children are often overconfident when monitoring their learning, which is harmful for effective control and learning. The current study investigated children’s (N = 167, age range 7–12 years) judgments of learning (JOLs) when studying difficult concepts. The main aims were (a) to investigate how JOL accuracy is affected by accessibility cues and (b...

To effectively self-regulate learning, children need to self-evaluate whether they meet learning goals. Unfortunately, self-evaluations are often inaccurate, typically, children are overconfident. We investigated two explanations for developmental progression in self-evaluations related to children's (48 5/6-year-olds and 53 7/8-year-olds) interpre...

When correcting a common misconception, it seems likely that for corrective feedback to be effective, it needs to be believed. In 2 experiments, we assessed how participants’ belief in the validity of corrective feedback regarding individual misconceptions influenced knowledge revision. After responding about the validity of a set of misconceptions...

Misconceptions about science are often not corrected during study when they are held with high confidence. However, when corrective feedback co-activates a misconception together with the correct conception, this feedback may surprise the learner and draw attention, especially when the misconceptions are held with high confidence. Therefore, high-c...

When studying verbal materials, both adults and children are often poor at accurately monitoring their level of learning and regulating their subsequent restudy of materials, which leads to suboptimal test performance. The present experiment investigated how monitoring accuracy and regulation of study could be improved when learning idiomatic phras...

The study investigated whether activation of inaccurate prior knowledge before study contributes to primary-school children's commission errors and overconfidence in these errors when learning new concepts. Findings indicate that inaccurate prior knowledge affects children's learning and calibration. The level of children's judgments of learning fo...

The study investigated whether activation of inaccurate prior knowledge before study contributes to primary-school children's commission errors and overconfidence in these errors when learning new concepts. Findings indicate that inaccurate prior knowledge affects children's learning and calibration. The level of children's judgments of learning fo...