Preschoolers' Memory Monitoring: Feeling-of-Knowing Judgments

Cultice, Joan C.; Somerville, Susan C.; Wellman, Henry M.

doi:10.2307/1129810

Cited by 135 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…We will explore existing evidence for this proposal in the following sections leading up to three experiments, which provide evidence that children younger than previously thought (3.5-year-olds) can access information about how certain they are about the contents of their own memories. These results, in contrast to previous research findings (Cultice et al , 1983;Flavell et al , 2000;Lockl & Schneider, 2002;Schneider, 1999), suggest that young children can access their own knowledge states, albeit not explicitly, opening the possibility of metacognition in early development. This research, taken in combination with developmental research suggesting that infant behaviors in learning paradigms reflect some level of access to their own knowledge (Houston-Price & Nakai, 2004;Hunter & Ames, 1988;Hunter et al , 1983;Koenig & Echols, 2003;Koenig & Harris, 2005), implies that memory-monitoring may indeed be present early in development, and may be a factor in early learning.…”

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Most of the research on the ability to access and act on information about one's own state of knowledge falls under the rubric of metacognition (Smith, Shields & Washburn, 2003;Washburn, Smith & Taglialatela, 2005). Children are not typically attributed with metacognitive abilities until late preschool at the earliest (Cultice, Somerville & Wellman, 1983;Flavell, Green & Flavell, 2000;Lockl & Schneider, 2002;Schneider, 1999), raising a potential paradox if accessing one's own knowledge is an important component of learning processes. A solution to this apparent paradox entertained here is that self-referential functions such as monitoring one's own memory are linked to core processes like memory, with the self-referential functions emerging implicitly in infancy along with the core processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Three‐year‐old children can access their own memory to guide responses on a visual matching task

Balcomb

Gerken

2008

Developmental Science

131

122

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Many models of learning rely on accessing internal knowledge states. Yet, although infants and young children are recognized to be proficient learners, the ability to act on metacognitive information is not thought to develop until early school years. In the experiments reported here, 3.5-year-olds demonstrated memory-monitoring skills by responding on a non-verbal task originally developed for non-human animals, in which they had to access their knowledge states. Children learned a set of paired associates, and were given the option to skip uncertain trials on a recognition memory test. Accuracy for accepted items was significantly higher than for skipped on a subsequent memory task that included all items. Additionally, children whose memory-monitoring assessments more closely matched actual memory performance showed superior overall learning, suggesting a correlation between memory-monitoring and memory itself. The results suggest that children may have implicit access to internal knowledge states at very young ages, providing an explanation for how they are able to guide learning, even as infants.

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Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three‐year‐old children can access their own memory to guide responses on a visual matching task

Balcomb

Gerken

2008

Developmental Science

131

122

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“…Balcomb and Gerken's (2008) computer task, modified to involve matching animals to their favorite object, revealed that 3.5-year-old children would selectively escape a trial in which they did not remember the associated pair. This suggested an earlier appreciation for knowledge states in children than previously found (Cultice et al 1983;Flavell et al 2000;Lockl and Schneider 2002;Schneider 1999;Wellman 1977). Earlier studies used verbal measures to determine whether children could know their knowledge or ignorance, which may have confounded findings (Gopnik and Graf 1988;Povinelli and DeBlois 1992;Rohwer et al 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…The intellectual activity of ''thinking about your own thinking'' (Terrace 2005) was traditionally reserved for Homo sapiens (Hicks 1907) and thought to emerge around the early school years (Cultice et al 1983;Flavell et al 2000;Johnson and Wellman 1980;Kreutzer et al 1975;Lockl and Schneider 2002;Schneider 1999;Wellman 1977) and solidify in adolescence (Schneider 2008). However, a recent surge in inquiry has seen growing evidence of an earlier emergence of metacognition in children (Balcomb and Gerken 2008;Beran et al 2012;Perdue et al 2014), and questions were raised about the metacognitive abilities of nonhuman animals (herein referred to as animals).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human children (Homo sapiens) know when they are ignorant about the location of food

2015

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Over the last decade, the metacognitive abilities of nonhuman primates and the developmental emergence of metacognition in children have become topics of increasing research interest. In the current study, the performance of three adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes; Experiment 1) and forty-four 3.5- and 5.5-year-old human children (Experiment 2) was assessed on a behavioral search paradigm designed to assess metacognition. Subjects either directly observed the baiting of a large reward into one cup among an array of four, or had the baiting occluded from their view. In half of the trials, subjects were also presented with an additional distinctive cup that was always visibly baited with a small reward. This cup allowed subjects the opportunity to escape from making a guess about the location of the bigger reward. All three chimpanzees and both age groups of children selected the escape cup more often when the baiting of the large reward was concealed, compared to when it was visible. This demonstrates that both species can selectively choose a guaranteed smaller reward when they do not know the location of a larger reward and provides insight into the development of metacognition.

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“…However, the preschool children were much more accurate when the tasks were ecologically valid and meaningful to them. Cultice et al (1983) showed that 4 and 5 year olds were able to provide accurate feeling-of-knowing judgements when presented with photographs of adults and children varying in terms of familiarity. Findings related to strategy use have also arrived at the conclusion that very young children can engage in strategic behaviours in the context of meaningful and agerelated tasks (Istomina 1975;Deloache et al 1985;Clark 1978).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of two observational tools for assessing metacognition and self-regulated learning in young children

Whitebread

Coltman

Pino-Pasternak

et al. 2008

Metacognition Learning

376

293

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This paper reports on observational approaches developed within a UK study to the identification and assessment of metacognition and self-regulation in young children in the 3-5 year age range. It is argued that the development of observational tools, although containing methodological difficulties, allows us to make more valid assessments of children's metacognitive and self-regulatory abilities in this age group. The analysis of 582 metacognitive or self-regulatory videotaped 'events' is described, including the development of a coding framework identifying verbal and non-verbal indicators. The construction of an observational instrument, the Children's Independent Learning Development (CHILD 3-5) checklist, is also reported together with evidence of the reliability with which it can be used by classroom teachers and early indications of its external validity as a measure of metacognition and self-regulation in young children. Given the educational significance of children's development of metacognitive and self-regulatory skills, it is argued that the development of such an instrument is potentially highly beneficial. The establishment of the metacognitive and self-regulatory capabilities of young children by means of the kinds of observational tools developed within this study also has clear and significant implications for models and theories of metacognition and self-regulation. The paper concludes with a discussion of these implications.Keywords Metacognitive development . Self-regulated learning . Observational methods . Young children This paper argues for the efficacy of using observational methods in naturalistic settings in the identification and assessment of metacognition and self-regulation in young children.

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Preschoolers' Memory Monitoring: Feeling-of-Knowing Judgments

Cited by 135 publications

References 14 publications

Three‐year‐old children can access their own memory to guide responses on a visual matching task

Three‐year‐old children can access their own memory to guide responses on a visual matching task

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human children (Homo sapiens) know when they are ignorant about the location of food

The development of two observational tools for assessing metacognition and self-regulated learning in young children

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