Relations between children’s metamemory and strategic performance: Time-varying covariates in early elementary school

Abstract

Although much is known about the development of memory strategies and metamemory in childhood, evidence for linkages between these memory skills, either concurrently or over time, has been limited. Drawing from a longitudinal investigation of the development of memory, repeated assessments of children’s (N=107) strategy use and declarative metamemory were made, in order to examine the development of these skills and the relations between them over time. Latent curve models were used first to estimate the trajectories of children’s strategy use and metamemory and then to examine predictors of children’s performance in each of these domains. Children’s metamemory at the beginning of Grade 1 was linked to child- and home-level factors, whereas the development of both skills was related to maternal education level. Additional modeling of the longitudinal relations between strategic sorting and metacognitive knowledge indicated that metamemory at earlier time points was predictive of subsequent strategy use.

Metamemory following childhood brain injury: A consequence of executive impairment

“…In contrast, children with executive impairment performed worse than their agematched controls, demonstrating a lower level of metamemory knowledge than is expected for children of their age. Overall, these results seem to corroborate the findings of previous developmental studies hypothesizing that high-level cognitive functions are involved in the development of children's general knowledge of memory functioning (e.g., Fernandez-Duque et al, 2000;Grammer et al, 2011).…”

“…Overall, these results strengthen the hypothesis that high-level cognitive functions contribute to the acquisition of several types of metamemory knowledge during childhood (Fernandez-Duque et al, 2000;Grammer et al, 2011).…”

“…Interestingly, some authors have recently postulated that certain high-level cognitive functions are involved in the development of the two classes of metamemory knowledge (Antshel & Nastasi, 2008;Fernandez-Duque, Baird, & Posner, 2000;Grammer et al, 2011). This hypothesis is supported by several neuropsychological studies carried out on adult patients with TBI that highlighted significant (negative) correlations between patients' level of executive functioning and both types of metamemory measures.…”

“…One of the best-supported findings in this field involves the positive influence of metamemory knowledge (DeMarie, Miller, Ferron, & Cunningham, 2004;Geurten, Lejeune, & Meulemans, 2015;Grammer, Purtell, Coffman, & Ornstein, 2011;Hutchens et al, 2012;Lachman & Andreoletti, 2006;Ownsworth, McFarland, & Young, 2002). Traditionally, metamemory knowledge is supposed to comprise semantic knowledge of memory tasks and strategies, including knowledge of internal (e.g., mental imagery) and external strategies (e.g., shopping lists), as well as knowledge about task characteristics (e.g., delay effect), and people's Running head: Metamemory Following Childhood Brain Injury 4 representations of their own memory functioning (i.e., memory self-awareness), including individuals' perception and understanding of their own memory strengths and limitations (Flavell, 1979;Kennedy & Coelho, 2005;Morris & Mograbi, 2013;Schneider, 2008;Toglia & Kirk, 2000).…”

“…In their longitudinal study, for example, Grammer et al (2011) established that 6-year-old children's use of organizational strategies (e.g., conceptual sorting and clustering) on a classical sort-recall memory task at a specific time point is predicted by their explicit knowledge of these strategies three months earlier. (For a study demonstrating the influence of metamemory knowledge on strategy use in adults, see Hutchens et al, 2012.…”