The development of metacognitive causal explanations Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Metacognitive causal explanations reflect a child's understanding about how or why a strategy works. Two studies examined the growth of metacognitive causal explanations over time. Study 1 found an increase in the sophistication of early elementary school children's causal explanations over a 3-year period, although the mean intelligence score in the group was relatively high. Study 2 was conducted with children from a wider range of intelligence. Only those children with higher intelligence scores were likely to shift to more sophisticated metacognitive causal explanations over a 2-year period. Results from the two studies together suggest that the relationship between intelligence and metacognitive knowledge is much more than monotonic throughout development [Dev. Rev. 15 (1995) 1]. Indeed, higher levels of intelligence increase the likelihood that children will move from less sophisticated to more sophisticated levels of metacognitive understanding, possibly laying the foundation for more sophisticated later learning. 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

published proceedings

  • Learning and Individual Differences

author list (cited authors)

  • Alexander, J. M., Fabricius, W. V., Fleming, V. M., Zwahr, M., & Brown, S. A.

citation count

  • 13

complete list of authors

  • Alexander, Joyce M||Fabricius, William V||Fleming, Victoria Manion||Zwahr, Melissa||Brown, Shannon A

publication date

  • January 2003