Metacognitive monitoring and control must be accurate and efficient in order to allow self-guided learners to improve their performance. Yet few examples exist in which allowing learners to control learning produces higher levels of performance than restricting learners' control. Here we investigate the consequences of allowing learners to self-pace study of a list of words on later recognition, and show that learners with control of study-time allocation significantly outperformed subjects with no control, even when the total study time was equated between groups (Experiments 1 and 2). The self-pacing group also outperformed a group for which study time was automatically allocated as a function of normative item difficulty (Experiment 2). The advantage of self-pacing was apparent only in subjects who utilized a discrepancy reduction strategy-that is, who allocated more study time to normatively difficult items. Self-pacing can improve memory performance, but only when appropriate allocation strategies are used.

中文翻译：

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自定进度学习的有效性

元认知监测和控制必须准确有效，以便让自我引导的学习者提高他们的表现。然而，很少有例子表明允许学习者控制学习比限制学习者的控制能产生更高水平的表现。在这里，我们调查了允许学习者在以后的识别中自主学习单词列表的后果，并表明控制学习时间分配的学习者明显优于没有控制的学习者，即使总学习时间在组之间相等（实验 1 和 2）。自定进度组的表现也优于将学习时间自动分配为规范项目难度的函数的组（实验 2）。自定进度的优势仅在使用差异减少策略的受试者中才明显 - 即，将更多的学习时间分配给规范性困难的项目。自调步可以提高内存性能，但前提是使用了适当的分配策略。