The Effects Of Item Difficulty And Reward On Metacognition Of Older And Younger Adults

Nowadays, the metacognitive monitoring level of the older adults is a research hotspot, and whether the the level of metacognition of the older adults exists aging phenomenon remains a question. The present research aimed to investigate the metacognitive monitoring and control of the older and younger adults under the two-factor trade-off situation, using the judgment of learning (JOL) and self-paced study time allocation as the indexes, in order to explore the developmental pattern and internal mechanism of the metacognitive monitoring and control.Judgment of learning (JOL) is learners evaluate the degree to which recently presented information is learned. Allocation of study time is one measurement index of metacognitive control (Metcalfe&Shimamura,1994), which is affected by the metacognitive monitoring (Nelson&Narens,1994; Son&Sethi,2006). Particularly, allocation of study time(AST) refers to the management and control of their cognitive resources of leaners in the learning process, reflecting the level of management and control of their own cognitive resources(Perfect&Schwartz,2002). Trade-off is a important characteristic of AST in complex situation. In complex situation, the study items have more than one characteristic, and there are no dominating option. If you want to increase the value of a characteristic, often require the expense of the other characteristics. So the Decision-makers must compare the different characteristics in order to make the final decision. This kind of decision is called trade-off.Two experiments were conducted in present research, which adopted the experimental paradigm from Ariel, Dunlosky and Bailey(2009). The two experiments were conducted with a2(Item Difficulty:difficult, easy)×2(Item Reward:1-point,5-point)×2(Age Group: younger adults, older adults) mixed disigned, Item Difficulty and Item Reward were manipulated within-subjects. The purpose of the two experiments was to investigate the characteristics of metacognitive monitoring and control of the older and younger adults under the different format, and whether there existed a trade-off process when learners developed their agendas by manipulating the item difficulty and item rewared. Experiment1found that there were no age-relatd differences in metamemory accuracy, but there were age-related differences in the metacognitive control. It indicated that older adults’s metacognitive control were lower than the younger adults. And there existed a trade-off process in the self-paces study for learners. Experiment2also found that there were no age-relatd differences in metamemory accuracy, but there were no age-related differences in the AST on5-point items, older adults spent more time on the easy items than the younger adults. It indicated that older adults’ ability of weighing of the item difficult and item reward for decision-making was the same as that of younger adults.Conclusions were as follows:(1)There were no age-relatd differences in metamemory accuracy between the two age goups.(2)Compared with the younger adults, older adults showed impaired control processes under the high cognitive resources situation(the simultaneous format), while older adults showed no impaired control processes under the low cognitive resources situation(the sequential format).(3)There existed a trade-off process when learners developed their agendas.(4)The working memory capacity could affected the construction and execution of agendas.