When children stop trusting what they have perceived

Background and aims: A common hypothesis to explain metamemory heuristics learning throughout childhood lies on the assumption that the knowledge underlying these metacognitive rules develop from people’s prior day-to-day experiences. However, the specific processes that sustain this learning are still unclear. In this study, we examined the mechanisms implicated in this empirical development by manipulating the learned interpretation of the Easily Learned = Easily Remembered (ELER) heuristic through an implicit process involving the detection of environmental regularities.
Method: A sample of sixty normally developing children aged 4-5, 6-7, and 8-9 years old was recruited for this study. Each child participated in three 60-minute sessions separated approximately by one-week interval and was trained to learn implicitly a reverse interpretation of the ELER heuristic. The influence of executive functions on children’s judgment of learning at posttest was also investigated.
Results: In addition to an early development of the ELER heuristic, results revealed a reduction of this heuristic’s use after the implicit training in the two youngest groups. Furthermore, executive monitoring was demonstrated to account for the lack of change observed in older children after the training phases.
Conclusions: In a developmental perspective, these findings present a coherent picture of children’s learning of metacognitive heuristics. Specifically, automatic and implicit learning was demonstrated to be followed by an effortful control of the heuristics’ use.