| Metacognition is a relatively new stream of cognitive research; in fact it was not until 1979 that the term was first coined Flavell (1971; as cited in Hacker, Dunlosky & Graesser, 1998). To date metacognitive researchers have investigated a wide spectrum of ideas, with the majority of research conducted with school-age children or younger adults. However, there has been very little research with older adults, especially in regards to metacognitive calibration and experience. Three studies were conducted in which metacognitive calibration (i.e., correlations between Judgement of Learning and accuracy rate) and experience (i.e., subject, practice, and age) was investigated. Participants in Study 1 were Psychology and Computer Science students and target stimuli included vocabulary from both disciplines. Although Computer Science students recalled more subject specific target words than Psychology students, there were no differences in metacognitive calibration. Study 2 defined experience as specific testing experience (i.e., test-retest of the same information), these results indicate that metacognitive calibration improves with experience. Grade point average (GPA) was used as one of the independent variables and results indicated that GPA was correlated with improvement in metacognitive calibration. Study 3 examined age-related differences and therefore experience was defined as the amount of life experience. There were no significant age differences in the metacognitive calibration after the test-retest phases of the study, suggesting that both age groups were able to adjust their metacognitive abilities with practice. Results of these studies demonstrate that metacognitive calibration, although modest, can be improved with practice with specific tasks and stimuli, and that this adjustment ability is maintained with age. |
