Differences in metacognitive skills among undergraduate students in education, psychology, and medicine

Abstract

Metacognitive skills such as when and why to apply strategies successfully given task demands (conditional knowledge) and those that assist in regulation like comprehension monitoring are essential for effective learning. However, the debate regarding whether metacognitive skills are domain general or domain specific continues to rage among scholars. Presumably, if metacognitive skills are domain specific, there should be significant differences between domains whereas if they are domain general, there should be no differences across domains. Thus, in the present study we examined the generality/specificity of metacognitive skills (knowledge of cognition: declarative, procedural, and conditional; regulation of cognition: planning, information management, debugging, comprehension monitoring, and evaluation) in a sample of Colombian university students (N = 507) studying education (n = 156), psychology (n = 166), and medicine (n = 185) employing the Spanish version of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory. Results revealed that there were significant differences in all but two metacognitive skills (procedural knowledge and debugging) across domains, largely supporting the domain specific hypothesis, but also partially supporting the domain general view. Implications and recommendation of the findings for theory, research, and practice are discussed.