The effect of feedback on children’s metacognitive judgments: a heuristic account

[en] In three experiments, we investigated whether the feedback effect on the accuracy of children’s metacognitive judgments results from an improvement in monitoring processes or the use of the Anchoring-and-Adjustment heuristic. Experiment 1 revealed that adding feedback increased the accuracy of young children’s (aged 4, 6, and 8 years) memory prediction. In Experiment 2, the influence of an external anchor on children’s metacognitive judgment was established. Finally, in Experiment 3, two memory tasks that differed in terms of difficulty were administered. Participants were randomly assigned to an anchoring (high/low/no anchor) and a feedback (feedback/no feedback) condition. Results demonstrated that children in the feedback condition adjusted their predictions toward the feedback, regardless of the task’s difficulty. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that external information provided by feedback is used as an anchor for judgment. This interpretation is strengthened by the correlation found between the two scores computed to assess participants’ susceptibility to anchoring and feedback effects, which indicates that children who are more sensitive to the anchoring effect are also more sensitive to the feedback effect.

Disciplines :

Theoretical & cognitive psychology

Author, co-author :

Geurten, Marie ; Université de Liège > R&D Direction : Chercheurs ULiège en mobilité

Meulemans, Thierry ; Université de Liège > Département de Psychologie > Neuropsychologie

Language :

English

Title :

The effect of feedback on children’s metacognitive judgments: a heuristic account

Publication date :

2017

Journal title :

Journal of Cognitive Psychology

ISSN :

2044-5911

eISSN :

2044-592X

Publisher :

Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, United Kingdom

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

184-201

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Funders :

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Co-funding of regional, national and international programmes (COFUND-FP)

Available on ORBi :

since 19 September 2016

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