Agency attributions of mental effort during self-regulated learning

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Metacognition

Background:

• Self-regulated learning involves monitoring performance, influenced by self-agency attributions.
• Investigating self-agency in metacognition is challenging for mental operations compared to motor actions.
• Effort-framing instructions can alter self-agency attributions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine how self-agency attributions and effort-framing instructions affect performance monitoring in self-regulated learning.
• To investigate the role of task parameters in mediating the effects of effort framing on self-agency attributions.
• To propose a model explaining the relationship between effort, attribution, and judgments of learning (JOLs).

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Participants studied items under time pressure, with varying effort-framing instructions.
• Experiment 2: Examined how interitem difficulty constrains effort attribution to agentic regulation.
• Experiment 3: Investigated how interitem recall incentive constrains effort attribution to nonagentic sources.

Main Results:

• Effort-framing instructions influenced JOLs by biasing effort attribution to agentic or nonagentic sources.
• Task parameters like item difficulty and recall incentive constrained the effects of effort framing.
• Effort regulation and attribution appear to occur in a module sensitive to task specifics.

Conclusions:

• Self-agency plays a crucial role in metacognitive monitoring during self-regulated learning.
• The relationship between effort, attribution, and JOLs is modulated by task characteristics.
• A distinct cognitive module likely handles effort regulation and attribution, separate from higher-level goals.