The Effect Of Feedback And Item Difficulty On Metacognitive Monitoring And Control

Metacognition is the cognition of individual cognition,including metacognitive monitoring and control.Metacognitive monitoring play a important role in study.How do people conduct metacognitive monitoring? Recently,more and more studies found that metacognition have been affected by perception cues(e.g.,study time,repetition,task difficulty and so on).These results support the cue-utilization model.There are many learning styles during study.For example,if we have 5 minutes to recite a poem.Some people use 5 minutes to reading,some people use 3 minutes to read,and use 2 minutes to test whether we remember or not.The “Study—Test”are used in study usually,for example,in order to test whether the students have mastered the knowledge,uniting testing is required after each unit has been studied during the primary and secondary school.Some research have found that testing or retrieval practice are better to memory than repetition(Carpenter &Pashler,2008;Roediger,& Karpicke,2006),especially when feedback is provided after testing.Because feedback provides another study opportunity,enhances retention of correct information,identifies information needing additional study,and facilitates error correction.(Pashler,Cepeda,Wixted,&Rohrer,2005;Kulhavy,& Anderson,1972;Sitzman,Rhodes,& Tauber,2014;Sitzman,Rhodes,Tauber,& Liceralde,2015;Sitzman,Rhodes,& Kornel).Although feedback can improve performance,but whether the feedback is a useful clue to metacognitive monitoring and control or not still unclear.The current experiments explored the influence of feedback on metacognition and support the cueutilization model.There are some studies have investigated the influence of feedback on metacognitive monitoring.But the results are different(Kornell,&Rhodes,2013;Sitzman,Rhodes,& Kornell,2016).The research of feedback on metacognition can provide powerful evidence on cue-utilization model and improve the cue utilization during study.And providing effective guidance for learner's learning process.The present study including 4 experiments,all experiments are 2×2 mixed design.In Experiment 1,the PRAM paradigm of judgment of learning(JOL)was used to investigated the effects of feedback(feedback,nor feedback)on JOL under different item difficulties.The results shown that the main effects of feedback and item difficulty are significant,the JOL was higher when provide feedback than nor feedback,and the JOL is higher in lower difficulty than higher difficulty.The interaction between item difficulty and feedback is significant.The JOL are not significant in lower difficulty,but in higher difficulty,the JOL is higher in feedback than nor feedback.The absolute accuracy is better in nor feedback than feedback,there was a significant underestimation in feedback group.The relative accuracy is significantly better in nor feedback group than feedback group.Feedback had effect on judgment of learning,But the accuracy of monitoring is worse in feedback group in Experiment 1.The possible reason for the result is that the participant underestimated or even ignore the effect of feedback.Therefore,participants were induced to believe that feedback can promote correct item retention and correct wrong item into right in Experiment 2.In order to explore whether the belief(with or without)can improve the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring.The results found that the belief can improve abosolutely accuracy in low difficulty.But can not improve the relative accuracy.Experiment 3 explored the effect of feedback on metacognitive control under different item difficulty.The dicator is restudy choice.The results shown that feedback will not affect the restudy choice in general.Further analysis found that participants chose to restudy more frequently in nonfeedback group when the recall is correct in the first test.In the error item,the restudy choice have no significance in high difficulty.But participants in nonfeedback group chose to restudy more frequently in low difficulty.The accuracy of restudy choice in nonfeedback group are significantly higher than feedback group.It was found that the feedback had no effect on metacognitive control in general in Experiment 3.It is supposed that participant underestimated or even ignore the effect of feedback.Therefore,participants were induced to believe that feedback can promote correct item retention and correct wrong item into right in Experiment 4.In order to explore the effect of belief on metacognitive control.The results revealed that the belief have effect on correct item and the incorrect item with low difficulty.The accuracy of restudy choice were decrease in high difficult when the belief provided.The study has the following conclusion: 1)The feedback has affect on metacognitive monitoring,and the item difficulty plays a moderating role on the effect.2)The accuracy of metacognitive monitoring in low item difficulty can be improved when induce the belief about feedback can enhances retention of correct information,identifies information and facilitates error correction.3)The accuracy of metacognitve control has been reduced by induce the belief of feedback can enhances retention of correct information,identifies information and facilitates error correction.