The role of strategy utility knowledge in children's strategy decision making

Ten- to thirteen-year-olds selected between two methods for learning vocabulary meanings, the objectively more effective keyword method and a naturalistic context method. The main hypothesis of the study was that children produce relative strategy efficacy knowledge during practive with strategies but that children may fail to use this knowledge to direct maintenance of the more effective strategy. To evaluate this position, control subjects selected between the keyword and context strategies without the benefit of practice. In three other conditions subjects practiced the techniques before making strategy choices. Simple practice did not increase keyword-method selection. Practice combined with a prompt to think back to performance with the two strategies during practice increased keyword selection to a high level, comparable to keyword selection when subjects were given explicit feedback about keyword superiority immediately before strategy selections were made. Supplementary analyses supported the conclusion that even in the absence of explicit performance feedback, children can be induced to reflect on their use of strategies and the outcome of those strategic actions in a fashion as to affect their subsequent cognitive actions, in this case, strategy choices. The data are discussed with reference to other work on monitoring and metamemorial effects on cognition.