The Effects of Intelligence, Self-Concept, and Attributional Style on Metamemory and Memory Behaviour

Abstract

The influence of intelligence, self-concept, and causal attributions on metamemory and the metamemory-memory behaviour relationship in grade-school children was studied. Following the assessment of intelligence, self-concept, and causal attributions, 150 children from each of grades 3 and 5 were given a metamemory interview and a sort-recall task. Metamemory, strategy, and recall scores increased with age. Causal modelling (LISREL) analyses using latent variables were conducted to assess the effects of the constructs intelligence and "hope of success" (i.e., the attributional and self-concept variables) on metamemory and memory behaviour. Hope of success significantly influenced metamemory and memory performance in the older children, but not in third graders. However, intelligence had an impact on metamemory in all age groups. But since metamemory still had a significant direct effect on memory behaviour, the study provides support for the assumption that metamemory remains an important predictor of memory behaviour even after the influence of conceptually related constructs has been taken into account.

The role of immaturity in human development.

“…Young children seem to have different, more lenient criteria for evaluating success and failure for themselves than for others (e.g., Schneider, 1991;Stipek, 1981), do not differentiate effort from ability (e.g., Harter & Pile, 1984), and may have a difficult time distinguishing their wishes (how they wish to perform) from their actual expectations (e.g., Stipek, 1984), Regardless of the reasons for young children's inaccurate predictions of their performance, such overestimation of one's ability would seem to be a detriment to skilled performance. As noted earlier, in school-aged children, IQ and metacognition are usually positively related (e.g., Schneider et al, 1987). Nonetheless, Bjorklund and Green (1992) have argued that being out of touch with one's physical and mental abilities has benefits for young children, those who are at the low end of the physical-and mental-ability scales.…”

Memory Development Between 2 and 20

“…There is convincing evidence of relationships between metamemory, Strategie behaviors and memor from studies that u s w1t atent varia les Hasselhorn, 1986;Kurtz et al, 1982;Schneider, Körkel, & Weinert, 1987b;Weinert et al, 1984;Weinert, Schneider, & Knopf, in press). These analyses permit the conclusions that even relatively young elementary-school children possess knowledge about organizational strategies that has a direct influence on strategic behaviors, which increases the tendency to organize to-be-learned materials taxonomically.…”

“…For one, the competence of young children can be overestimated if the researcher stops taking estimates once the child indicates that a Iist is too long-Young children often respond inconsistently, and even if they indicated that tbey could not recall a Iist composed of five or six iterns, they might claim that seven-or eight-item lists would be no problern (Brown, 1978). Whetber span estimates are accurate seems to vary with material and task familiarity (e.g., Körkel, 1987;Markman, 1973;Schneider, Körkel, & Weinert, 1987b) or whether children receive training on the task (Markman, 1973;Weaver & Cunningham, 1985). Modeofassessment seems to affect span estimations.…”

“…Exarnples of exploratory analyses using the LVPLS (latent variable partialleast square) computer program from Lohmöller (1984) can be found in Hassethorn (1986), Hassethorn and Körkel (1986), Körkel et al (1983), Kurtz and Borkowski (1987), Kurtz et al (1986), Schneider (1985b), andSchneideret al (1986). Studies on tbe relationship of metamemory to memory using conf1Cmatory LISREL (linear structural relationships; Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1984) modeling have been presented by Körkel (1987) ;Schneider, Körkel, and Weinert (1987b); as well as Weinert et al (1984).…”

Expertise, Aptitude, and Strategic Remembering

“…On the other hand, individual differences in intelligence should strongly affect sorting behavior and recall in the sort-recall task using nonsoccer words. Although most studies exploring developmental trends in organizational behavior and recall on sort-recall tasks did not control for effects of verbal intelligence, the few studies that did so found signiflcant intercorrelations among verbal intelligence, sorting, clustering, and recall (e.g., Schneider, Korkel, & Weinert, 1987).…”