Does Providing External Standards After Keyword Generation Improve Metacomprehension Accuracy and Regulation for High School Students?

Abstract

Our study investigated whether comparing expert keywords after learners have generated keywords on their own improves relative metacomprehension accuracy for high school students - as found by Waldeyer and Roelle (2021) with university students. Moreover, we analyzed whether this potential improvement in metacomprehension accuracy in turn affects regulation decisions. We conducted an experiment with 142 high school students who read three expository texts and then were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: (a) generation of keywords after reading and a comparison with expert keywords, or (b) generation of keywords after reading without comparison. We found that relative metacomprehension accuracy did not differ between the conditions. Also, regulation decisions were not affected by condition. Our findings are discussed with respect to limitations and implications.