ABSTRACT

This study investigated developmental differences in metacognitive monitoring and control in younger (5- to 6-year-old) and older (8- to 10-year-old) children’s prospective memory (PM). Metacognitive monitoring was assessed by asking the children to judge their performance before (prediction) and after (postdiction) performing a resource-demanding event-based PM task. Metacognitive control was evaluated by comparison of ongoing task (OT) performance without and with the embedded PM task (i.e., attentional monitoring costs). Older children outperformed younger children in the PM task and were also more accurate in judging their PM performance than younger children, who greatly overestimated their PM performance. Attentional monitoring costs were found only in older children and were associated with both PM performance and performance predictions, thus suggesting that only older children were able to translate metacognitive monitoring into effective control. This study reports new findings on the relation between metacognition and PM during childhood.

摘要

本研究调查了年轻（5 至 6 岁）和年长（8 至 10 岁）儿童前瞻记忆 (PM) 元认知监测和控制的发育差异。元认知监测是通过要求孩子们在执行需要资源的基于事件的 PM 任务之前（预测）和之后（后）判断他们的表现来评估的。通过比较没有和有嵌入式 PM 任务（即注意力监控成本）的正在进行的任务 (OT) 性能来评估元认知控制。年龄较大的孩子在 PM 任务中的表现优于年幼的孩子，并且在判断自己的 PM 表现时也比年幼的孩子更准确，后者大大高估了自己的 PM 表现。注意力监测成本仅在年龄较大的儿童中发现，并且与 PM 表现和表现预测相关，因此表明只有年龄较大的儿童才能将元认知监测转化为有效控制。这项研究报告了有关儿童期元认知与 PM 之间关系的新发现。