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Metacognitive monitoring in university classes: anticipating a graded vs. a pass-fail test affects monitoring accuracy

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Abstract

Three field studies tested the hypothesis that anticipating a graded test as opposed to a pass-fail test enhances metacognitive monitoring. Participants were teacher candidates who completed a mid-term and a final test in psychology courses. Each participant chose whether the result of the final test should be evaluated with one of five grades or with a pass-fail decision. In both tests, participants answered true–false inference items about the contents of the course and indicated their confidence in the correctness of each answer. When a graded test was expected, confidence and the absolute accuracy of the confidence judgments increased and bias decreased to a greater extent than when a pass-fail decision was expected. However, expecting a grade increased participants’ confidence not only in correct answers but also in incorrect answers (Study 1). Feedback and instructions emphasizing the importance of accurate discrimination between correct and incorrect answers did not weaken this effect (Study 2). The generalizability of the findings was investigated by reanalyzing the test results of participants in eight other psychology courses (Study 3). The results are discussed in terms of the motivational consequences of grading.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that confidence, in the present context, is conceptualized as a metacognitively based judgment in actual cognitive activities, usually measured as an item-specific judgment of the probability of answering a specific item correctly, and not as a personality trait describing the trans-situational disposition of being self-assured or self-confident (for a discussion of the different concepts of confidence in psychological research see e.g., Stankov and Kleitman 2008).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology in Education, University of Muenster, Fliednerstr. 21, 48149, Münster, Germany

    Jonathan Barenberg & Stephan Dutke

Authors
  1. Jonathan Barenberg
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  2. Stephan Dutke
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Correspondence to Jonathan Barenberg.

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Author note

Thanks are due to our colleagues in the Institute of Psychology in Education at the University of Muenster for discussion and helpful comments during the preparation of this manuscript.

Appendices

Appendix 1

The indices of metacognitive monitoring accuracy were computed according to the following formulas:

  1. (1)

    absolute accuracy of the confidence judgments (AC):

    $$ AC=\frac{a+d }{a+b+c+d } $$
  2. (2)

    bias of the confidence judgments (BS):

    $$ BIAS=\frac{{\left( {a+b} \right)-\left( {a+c} \right)}}{a+b+c+d } $$
  3. (3)

    confident-correct probability (CCP):

    $$ CCP=\frac{a}{a+c } $$
  4. (4)

    confident-incorrect probability (CIP):

    $$ CIP=\frac{b}{b+d } $$
  5. (5)

    discrimination between correct and incorrect decisions (DIS):

    $$ DIS=CCP-CIP $$

The attributes of the answer to each item (correct or incorrect, confident or unconfident) were coded as 1 (given) or 0 (not given).

Appendix 2

Written instructions given to the participants (translated from German):

Below you will find statements some of which are true and some are false. Please indicate for each statement whether you think it is true or not. Additionally, please indicate whether you are sure or unsure that your answer is correct:

  • If you are sure that the statement is false, check the first box in the right of the word (“No”).

  • If you think the statement may be false, but you are not sure, check the second box (“No?”).

  • If you think the statement may be true, but you are not sure, check the third box (“Yes?”).

  • If you are sure that the statement is true, check the fourth box (“Yes”).

Please note that the test score reflects the correctness of your answers and the confidence in your answers:

  • If your answer is correct and you are sure, this answer will be scored with +2 points.

  • If your answer is correct but you are not sure, this answer will be scored with +1 point.

  • If your answer is incorrect but you are not sure, this answer will be scored with −1 point.

  • If your answer is incorrect and you are sure, this answer will be scored with −2 points.

Please answer each item. Unanswered items will be scored with −2 points.

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Barenberg, J., Dutke, S. Metacognitive monitoring in university classes: anticipating a graded vs. a pass-fail test affects monitoring accuracy. Metacognition Learning 8, 121–143 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-013-9098-3

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