Individual Differences in Metacognition: Evidence Against a General Metacognitive Ability

Overview

Journal Mem Cognit

Specialty Psychology

Date 2000 Mar 14

PMID 10714142

Citations 49

Authors

W L Kelemen

P J Frost

C A Weaver 3rd

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Individual differences in metacognitive accuracy are generally thought to reflect differences in metacognitive ability. If so, memory monitoring performance should be consistent across different meta-cognitive tasks and show high test-retest reliability. Two experiments examined these possibilities, using four common metacognitive tasks: ease of learning judgments, feeling of knowing judgments, judgments of learning, and text comprehension monitoring. Alternate-forms correlations were computed for metacognitive accuracy (with a 1-week interval between tests). Although individual differences in memory and confidence were stable across both sessions and tasks, differences in metacognitive accuracy were not. These results pose considerable practical and theoretical challenges for metacognitive researchers.

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