Abstract
Introduction. Metacognition is a process of awareness and regulation of one's own cognitive processes, in which two components are distinguished: metaknowledge (of the strategies and factors of cognition) and metaregulation (planning, monitoring and evaluation). Metacognition was thought to emerge only at the age of 7-8 years, but recent research suggests that some components of metacognition can be detected from an earlier age.
Methods. The aim of the study was to identify those components of metacognition that can be assessed in 5–6-year-old children and to develop a methodology for their assessment. The study involved 62 children from 4 years 11 months to 6 years 10 months (mean age 66.8 months, 50% boys) - pupils of senior and preparatory groups of kindergartens in Moscow and Kazan. Two types of tasks were used: mnemic and thinking, the assessment of metacognition components was based on a conversation with children in the process of problem solving. Correlation analysis and analysis of differences by the Mann-Whitney criterion were used for data processing. Qualitative analysis was used to analyse children's answers.
Results. Components that can be assessed at this age were identified: two components of metaknowledge (of the strategy and success factors), and two components of metaregulation (evaluation of one's success and evaluation of difficulties). Metacognitive evaluation of one's success and difficulties are positively related to success on thinking tasks, but not on memorisation tasks. Also, greater success on thinking tasks is found in children who can identify their strategy and the factors that influenced their outcome. No such relationship was found for mnemic tasks.
Discussion of results. The analysis of solving thinking tasks provides greater opportunities for assessing the components of metacognition in children than the analysis of solving memory tasks, this technique is considered as the most promising for future research.
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