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THE INFLUENCE OF VERBAL ABILITY AND METAMEMORY ON FUTURE RECALL
Author(s) -
SWANSON H. LEE
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
british journal of educational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.557
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 2044-8279
pISSN - 0007-0998
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8279.1987.tb03151.x
Subject(s) - metamemory , psychology , recall , developmental psychology , equivalence (formal languages) , cognitive psychology , reading (process) , cognition , metacognition , linguistics , philosophy , neuroscience
S ummary . This study determines whether items from a metamemorial questionnaire would better predict recall performance than standardised measures of general verbal ability. Thirty‐two children, separated into high and average verbal ability groups, were administered a metamemory test and, one week later, two prose and free‐recall tasks. The results indicated that ability group differences were limited to certain dependent measures (i.e., mental effort, knowledge about strategies, equivalence/non‐equivalence of strategy resources and strategy applicability). Most importantly, a stepwise regression analysis indicated that metamemory scores were more likely to predict the future recallability of material than measures of language ability (i.e., verbal IQ, reading and language achievement). Results are discussed in terms of children's “awareness” of the combined influences of memory variables and of the awareness of executive routines as a more important determinant of future recall than language ability.