Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring: A New Area of Cognitive-Developmental Inquiry.

TLDR: The authors found that younger children are quite limited in their knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena, or in their metacognition, and do relatively little monitoring of their own memory, comprehension, and other cognitive enterprises.

Abstract: Preschool and elementary school children were asked to study a set of items until they were sure they could recall them perfectly (Flavell, Friedrichs, & Hoyt, 1970). The older subjects studied for a while, said they were ready, and usually were, that is, they showed perfect recall. The younger children studied for a while, said they were ready, and usually were not. In another study, elementary school children were asked to help the experimenter evaluate the communicative adequacy of verbal instructions, indicating any omissions and obscurities (Markman, 1977). Although the instructions were riddled with blatant omissions and obscurities, the younger subjects were surprisingly poor at detecting them. They incorrectly thought they had understood and could follow the instructions, much as their counterparts in the study by Flavell et al. (1970) incorrectly thought they had memorized and could recall the items. Results such as these have suggested that young children are quite limited in their knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena, or in their metacognition, and do relatively little monitoring of their own memory, comprehension, and other cognitive enterprises (see, e.g., Brown, 1978; Flavell, 1978; Flavell & Wellman, 1977; Kreutzer, Leonard, & Flavell, 1975; Flavell, Note 1, Note 2, Note 3; Markman, Note 4). Investigators have recently concluded that metacognition plays an important role in oral communication of information, oral persuasion, oral comprehension, reading comprehension, writing, language acquisition, attention, memory, problem solving, social cognition, and, various types of self-control and self-instruction; there are also clear indications that ideas about metacognition are beginning to make contact with similar ideas in the areas of social learning theory, cognitive behavior modification, personalty development, and education (Flavell, Note 1, Note 2, Note 3). Thus, the nature and de-