Maintenance and generalization of trained metamnemonic awareness by educable retarded children

The majority of educable retarded children (young group, MA 6; old group, MA 8) required to estimate their memory span was found to be unrealistic estimators. Following training in span estimation the older subjects improved under both explicit and implicit feedback conditions, while younger children only benefited from explicit feedback. Three posttests of the effects of training revealed long-term (1-year) maintenance of training for older subjects but younger subjects showed post-test improvement only on an immediate test. While long-term maintenance was found for older subjects, generalization to similar span-estimation tests was not found. The utility of training metamnemonic knowledge which does not generalize was questioned and alternate training procedures were proposed.