Text cohesion and metacomprehension: immediate and delayed judgments

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Metacognition
• Reading Comprehension

Background:

• Metacognitive judgments, or comprehension monitoring, are crucial for effective learning.
• Existing theories suggest judgments depend on available cues at the time of assessment.
• The role of working memory dynamics in cue availability for metacognitive judgments remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the hypothesis that metacognitive judgments are based on working memory content at the precise moment of judgment.
• To examine how working memory management during reading influences the availability of cues for metacognitive ratings.
• To differentiate the impact of text cohesion on paragraph-level versus whole-text comprehension judgments.

Main Methods:

• Conducted three experiments manipulating text cohesion and memory access.
• Assessed comprehension judgments at different time points after reading.
• Introduced interfering tasks to disrupt working memory contents.
• Varied reader access to the text during judgment.

Main Results:

• Text cohesion manipulations affected paragraph-level judgments but not whole-text judgments.
• An interfering task immediately prior to judgment eliminated the cohesion effect on paragraph judgments.
• Whole-text judgments were influenced by text cohesion when readers maintained text access.

Conclusions:

• Working memory content at the moment of judgment is a key determinant of metacognitive accuracy.
• Effective working memory management during reading is essential for utilizing relevant cues.
• The findings support the 'working metacognition hypothesis' and Koriat's cue utilization approach, emphasizing temporal dynamics in metacognition.