Differences in judgments of learning difficulty

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. General 1982-12, Vol.111 (4), p.406-413
• Main Author: Stein, Barry S
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic Achievement; Child; Concept Formation; Human; Humans; Judgment; Learning; Learning Disorders - psychology; Mental Recall; Set (Psychology); Task Complexity
• ISSN: 0096-3445; 1939-2222
• DOI: 10.1037/0096-3445.111.4.406

In 2 experiments, 30 academically successful and less successful (as determined by the Reading and Language subtests of the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills) 5th graders were asked to make judgments about the ease of understanding and remembering various sentences and were given the opportunity to attempt to remember some of them before being asked to judge new sets of sentences. Results of Exp I indicate that at the beginning of the experiment, the successful Ss were much more likely than their less successful peers to realize that sentences expressing arbitrary relationships were more difficult to remember. These differences became even greater after Ss were given the opportunity to attempt to remember some of the sentences they had judged initially. The memory performance of the successful Ss also improved as they became more familiar with the experimental task, but the performance of the less successful Ss did not. Results of Exp II show that less successful Ss who had received appropriate training were able to use information about the arbitrariness of relationships as the basis for their judgments of learning difficulty. The training also facilitated their ability to remember. (15 ref)