| Abstract: | Two components of metastrategic knowledge—knowledge of task objectives and knowledge of strategies—are distinguished and assessed in the context of an inductive causal reasoning task administered to fifth graders in a microgenetic design. Both metastrategic knowledge and strategic performance improved over a seven-week period of engagement with the task. However, children were unlikely to attain strategic mastery until they had reached particular levels of metastrategic understanding. Discussion focuses on (a) the likelihood of multiple directions of influence between strategic and metastrategic knowledge systems, (b) coordination of task and strategy components of metastrategic knowledge as a central task of the metastrategic knowledge system, and (c) the generality of the present findings. |
