Do illustrations help or harm metacomprehension accuracy?

The present research examined the effect of illustrations on readers' metacomprehension accuracy for expository science text. In two experiments, students read non-illustrated texts, or the same texts illustrated with either conceptual or decorative images; were asked to judge how well they understood each text; and then took tests for each topic. Metacomprehension accuracy was computed as the intra-individual correlation between judgments and inference test performance. Results from both studies showed that the presence of decorative images can lead to poor metacomprehension accuracy. In the second study, an analysis of the cues that students reported using to make their judgments revealed that students who used comprehension-relevant cues showed more accurate metacomprehension. A self-explanation instruction did not alter either comprehension-relevant cue use or metacomprehension accuracy, although some advantages were seen when readers were prompted to self-explain from texts illustrated with conceptual images. These results suggest that students may need more explicit instruction or support to promote the use of valid cues when engaging in comprehension monitoring with illustrated text, and that seductive information such as decorative images may undermine comprehension monitoring.     

The impact of strategy instruction and timing of estimates on low and high working-memory capacity readers' absolute monitoring accuracy

Working-memory capacity, strategy instruction, and timing of estimates were investigated for their effects on absolute monitoring accuracy, which is the difference between estimated and actual reading comprehension test performance. Participants read two expository texts under one of two randomly assigned reading strategy instruction conditions (an explanation strategy versus no strategy). Next, readers estimated comprehension test performance both immediately and after a delay. Readers' estimations were followed by the completion of a comprehension test, a postdiction of test performance, and a working-memory capacity task. The results showed that low working-memory capacity readers were generally more accurate than high working-memory capacity readers but were not affected by strategy instruction or timing of estimates. In contrast, high working-memory capacity readers were most accurate when instructed to use an explanation strategy and when estimates were made immediately. These results are described in the context of the increased processing hypothesis, which contends that more effortful processing during reading augments the availability of text concepts and, in turn, enhances absolute monitoring accuracy.     

Lost in narrative? The effect of informative narratives on text comprehension and metacomprehension accuracy

Informative narratives are enriched expository texts that provide to-be-learned conceptual information within a storyline with the aim to foster comprehension. However, research casts doubt on such a benefit for comprehension. Additionally, it is an open question how informative narratives impact metacomprehension accuracy. The results of two experiments (N₁ = 63 and N₂ = 70 university students) showed that informative narratives were less or not at all beneficial to text comprehension compared with expository texts. Moreover, informative narratives often led to more overestimation of comprehension in terms of predictions, postdictions, and response confidence than expository texts. This seemed to be particularly true, as Experiment 2 revealed, for readers with a lower need for cognition because they were more transported into the storyline of informative narratives. The findings suggest that informative narratives prime the activation of a narrative-specific reading goal and, thus, distract readers from learning and accurately monitoring the to-be-learned conceptual information.     

Metacognitive judgments and disfluency – Does disfluency lead to more accurate judgments,better control,and better performance?

Theories of metacognition assume that better monitoring leads to better control and performance. Furthermore, monitoring accuracy is often low because students are overconfident (absolute accuracy) and unable to discriminate comprehension of different text-passages (relative accuracy). Fluency seems to be a cue for metacognitive judgments, and therefore, reducing fluency should lead to less automatic processing, lower judgments, and better absolute and relative accuracy. Because the accuracy of metacognitive judgments is the basis of the control of learning, disfluency should lead to more appropriate control and thus to better performance. To test these assumptions, students (N = 83) learned either with disfluent or with fluent text-passages. The results show that disfluency led to better absolute and relative accuracy but not for all types of judgments. Moreover, students hardly implemented monitoring in control, resulting in lack of improved performance. Further research is required to investigate why students did not base control on monitoring.     

Adult Metacomprehension: Judgment Processes and Accuracy Constraints

The objective of this paper is to review and synthesize two interrelated topics in the adult metacomprehension literature: the bases of metacomprehension judgment and the constraints on metacomprehension accuracy. Our review shows that adult readers base their metacomprehension judgments on different types of information, including experiences with current tasks and pre-formed expectations of performance affected by factors such as self-perception of ability. We propose a model that shows the anchoring and adjustment mechanism (Tversky and Kahneman, Science 185:1124–1130, 1974) underlies metacomprehension judgments. Specifically, due to test uncertainty, people may judge future comprehension performance by starting with an anchor such as pre-formed performance expectations and then (insufficiently) adjust away from it based on experiences with current tasks. This anchoring and adjustment model of metacomprehension judgment sheds light on what constrains metacomprehension accuracy. We conclude that two main accuracy constraints are the anchoring effect and the poor diagnostic validity of experiential cues. Based on the review, we discuss avenues for future research that will further our understanding of the mechanisms underlying metacomprehension.     

Metacomprehension effects situated within an anchoring and adjustment framework

Low accuracy levels are often obtained when readers are asked to predict test performance over reading materials. Three investigations further explore the information readers use to make predictions during metacomprehension. Our results show that readers’ estimates are influenced by factors such as their initial impression of the reading task, based in part on their perceptions surrounding text genre and test item type. To explain these and other published results, a new framework for investigating metacomprehension using Tversky and Kahneman’s (Science, 185:1124–1131, 1974) anchoring and adjustment heuristic as a guide is proposed. We argue that readers anchor comprehension test performance on factors such as self-perceptions of reading ability and/or perceptions of the reading task and then insufficiently adjust their predictions to reflect the demands of the specific reading task at hand such as text difficulty.     

Drawing to improve metacomprehension accuracy

We examined the effect of drawing sketches on metacomprehension accuracy of science texts for 5th grade (ages 10–11) students (Study 1: N = 60, Study 2: N = 62). Students either received instruction on drawing organizational sketches, which focused on capturing the relationships described in texts, or representational sketches, which focused on capturing details described in texts. They then read and drew sketches for texts, predicted their performance, and completed tests. They completed this procedure for five texts. Metacomprehension accuracy was greater for students instructed to draw organizational sketches than for students instructed to draw representational sketches or those in a control group who did not draw (Study 2). Performance on comprehension tests was also greater for students instructed to draw organizational sketches than for students in other groups. The superior metacomprehension accuracy was explained in terms of the cue-utilization framework of metacognitive monitoring (Koriat, 1997).