title: Can students evaluate their understanding of cause-and-effect relations? The effects of diagram completion on monitoring accuracy.
abstract: For effective self-regulated study of expository texts, it is crucial that learners can accurately monitor their understanding of cause-and-effect relations. This study aimed to improve adolescents' monitoring accuracy using a diagram completion task. Participants read six texts, predicted performance, selected texts for restudy, and were tested for comprehension. Three groups were compared, in which learners either completed causal diagrams immediately after reading, completed them after a delay, or received no-diagram control instructions. Accuracy of predictions of performance was highest for learning of causal relations following delayed diagram completion. Completing delayed diagrams focused learners specifically on their learning of causal relations, so this task did not improve monitoring of learning of factual information. When selecting texts for restudy, the participants followed their predictions of performance to the same degree, regardless of monitoring accuracy. Fine-grained analyses also showed that, when completing delayed diagrams, learners based judgments on diagnostic cues that indicated actual understanding of connections between events in the text. Most important, delayed diagram completion can improve adolescents' ability to monitor their learning of cause-and-effect relations.
authors: Maastricht University, Department of Educational Development & Research and Graduate School of Health Professions Education, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: m.vanloon@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors: Mariëtte H
authors: MH
authors: van Loon
authors: Maastricht University, Department of Educational Development & Research and Graduate School of Health Professions Education, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors: Anique B H
authors: AB
authors: de Bruin
authors: Erasmus University Rotterdam, Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 1783, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors: Tamara
authors: T
authors: van Gog
authors: Maastricht University, Department of Educational Development & Research and Graduate School of Health Professions Education, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors: Jeroen J G
authors: JJ
authors: van Merriënboer
authors: Kent State University, Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242-0001, USA.
authors: John
authors: J
authors: Dunlosky
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012927:Social Control, Informal; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Adolescents; Causal relations; Diagram; Monitoring; Regulation