Abstract
How specific learning disabilities (SLD) affect metacognition in children? Given the importance of metacognition for cognitive growth during childhood, we aimed at determining whether metacognitive development in children with SLD undergo a shift from domain-specific to domain-general, as found during typical development. Children with SLD (N = 39; 20 females) and matched controls (N = 78; 40 females) aged between 10 and 14 (mean age = 12.2 years; mean parental education = 12.8 years) had to select the better strategy on each item in memory and arithmetic problem-solving tasks. Strategy use and judgments of confidence were assessed on each trial for each individual. We found that both children with SLD and controls had scores higher than chance when judging whether they selected the better strategy on a given item in both the arithmetic and the memory domains. Moreover, children with SLD were less accurate than controls when making their judgments. Furthermore, while our data showed a pattern consistent with domain-general metacognition in the control group, metacognition is bounded by task content in the SLD group. Implications of these findings to further our understanding of differences in metacognition between typically developing children and children with specific learning disabilities are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Research data and material are available by contacting the first author.
Code Availability
Not applicable.
References
Antshel, K. M., & Nastasi, R. (2008). Metamemory development in preschool children with ADHD. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29, 403–411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2008.06.007
Ardiale, E., & Lemaire, P. (2013a). Effects of execution duration on within-item strategy switching in young and older adults. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 464–472.
Ardiale, E., & Lemaire, P. (2013b). Within-Item Strategy Switching in arithmetic : A comparative study in children. Frontiers in Psychology: Developmental Psychology, 4, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00924
Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Gorgolewski, K. J., & Margulies, D. S. (2013). Medial and lateral networks in anterior prefrontal cortex support metacognitive ability for memory and perception. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 16657–16665. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0786-13.2013
Balcomb, F. K., & Gerken, L. (2008). Three-year-old children can access their own memory to guide responses on a visual matching task. Developmental Science, 11, 750–760. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00725.x
Baten, E., & Desoete, A. (2019). Metacognition and motivation in school-aged children with and without mathematical learning disabilities in Flanders. ZDM, 51, 679–689. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-018-01024-6
Bellon, E., Fias, W., & De Smedt, B. (2020). Metacognition across domains: Is the association between arithmetic and metacognitive monitoring domain-specific? PLoS ONE, 15, e0229932. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229932
Botsas, G. (2017). Differences in strategy use in the reading comprehension of narrative and science texts among students with and without learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal, 15, 139–162.
Boyle, J. R., Rosen, S. M., & Forchelli, G. (2016). Exploring metacognitive strategy use during note-taking for students with learning disabilities. Education, 3–13(44), 161–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2014.929722.
Carpenter, J., Sherman, M. T., Kievit, R. A., Seth, A. K., Lau, H., & Fleming, S. M. (2019). Domain-general enhancements of metacognitive ability through adaptive training. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 51–64. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000505
Costello, A. B., & Osborne, J. (2005). Best practices in exploratory factor analysis: Four recommendations for getting the most from your analysis. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation, 10, 7.
Desender, K., & Sasanguie, D. (2021). Math anxiety relates positively to metacognitive insight into mathematical decision making. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01511-8
Desoete, A., & Roeyers, H. (2002). Off-line metacognition - a domain-specific retardation in young children with learning disabilities? Learning Disability Quarterly, 25, 123–139. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511279
Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34, 906–911. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.906
Fleming, S. M., & Lau, H. C. (2014). How to measure metacognition. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8(443). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00443
Furnes, B., & Norman, E. (2015). Metacognition and reading: Comparing three forms of metacognition in normally developing readers and readers with dyslexia. Dyslexia, 21, 273–284. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1501
Garrett, A. J., Mazzocco, M. M. M., & Baker, L. (2006). Development of the Metacognitive Skills of Prediction and Evaluation in Children With or Without Math Disability. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 21, 77–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5826.2006.00208.x.
Geurten, M., & Bastin, C. (2019). Behaviors speak louder than explicit reports: Implicit metacognition in 2.5-year-old children. Developmental Science, 22, e12742. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12742
Geurten, M., Meulemans, T., & Lemaire, P. (2018). From domain-specific to domain-general? The developmental path of metacognition for strategy selection. Cognitive Development, 48, 62–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.08.002
Girli, A., & Öztürk, H. (2017). Metacognitive reading strategies in learning disability: Relations between usage level, academic self-efficacy and self-concept. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 10, 93–102.
Goupil, L., & Kouider, S. (2016). Behavioral and neural indices of metacognitive sensitivity in preverbal infants. Current Biology, 26, 3038–3045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.09.004
Hacker, D. J., Kiuhara, S. A., & Levin, J. R. (2019). A metacognitive intervention for teaching fractions to students with or at-risk for learning disabilities in mathematics. ZDM, 51, 601–612. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-019-01040-0
Job, J. M., & Klassen, R. M. (2012). Predicting performance on academic and non-academic tasks: A comparison of adolescents with and without learning disabilities. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 37, 162–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2011.05.001
Klassen, R. (2002). A question of calibration: A review of the self-efficacy beliefs of students with learning disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 25, 88–102. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511276
Koriat, A. (2007). Metacognition and consciousness. In P. D. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, & E. Thompson (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of consciousness (pp. 289–325). Cambridge University Press.
Koriat, A., & Shitzer-Reichert, R. (2002). Metacognitive judgments and their accuracy. In P. Chambres, M. Izaute, & P.-J. Marescaux (Eds.), Metacognition (pp. 1–17). Springer.
Kuhn, D. (2000). Metacognitive development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 178–181. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00088
Lemaire, P., & Brun, F. (2016). Age-related differences in children’s strategy repetition: A study in arithmetic. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 150, 227–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2016.05.014
Pasquali, A., Timmermans, B., & Cleeremans, A. (2010). Know thyself: Metacognitive networks and measures of consciousness. Cognition, 117, 182–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.08.010
Rosenzweig, C., Krawec, J., & Montague, M. (2011). Metacognitive strategy use of eighth-grade students with and without learning disabilities during mathematical problem solving: A think-aloud analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 44, 508–520. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219410378445
Schneider, W., Visé, M., Lockl, K., & Nelson, T. O. (2000). Developmental trends in children’s memory monitoring: Evidence from a judgment-of-learning task. Cognitive Development, 15, 115–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2014(00)00024-1
Siegler, R. S., & Crowley, K. (1994). Constraints on learning in nonprivileged domains. Cognitive Psychology, 27, 194–226. https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1994.1016
Tops, W., Glatz, T., Premchand, A., Callens, M., & Brysbaert, M. (2020). Study strategies of first-year undergraduates with and without dyslexia and the effect of gender. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 35, 398–413. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2019.1703580
Veenman, M. V., & Spaans, M. A. (2005). Relation between intellectual and metacognitive skills: Age and task differences. Learning and Individual Differences, 15, 159–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2004.12.001
Vo, V. A., Li, R., Kornell, N., Pouget, A., & Cantlon, J. F. (2014). Young children bet on their numerical skills: Metacognition in the numerical domain. Psychological Science, 25, 1712–1721. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614538458
Wechsler, D., & Naglieri, J. A. (2006). Wechsler nonverbal scale of ability: WNV. PsychCorp.
Funding
This work was supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under Grant # BLAN-1912–01 to PL.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Marie Geurten. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Marie Geurten and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics Approval
Institutional Review Board approval was obtained before the study started (Committee: FPLSE; Ref: 1617–01).
Consent to Participate
Parental written informed consent was obtained before the study started.
Consent for Publication
All authors consent to the publication of the present study.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Geurten, M., Lemaire, P. Domain-specific and domain-general metacognition for strategy selection in children with learning disabilities. Curr Psychol 42, 14297–14305 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02733-8
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02733-8