Knowledge and regulation of cognition in college science students

摘要

The research focused on three issues in college science students: whether there was empirical support for the two factor (knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition) view of metacognition, whether the two factors were related to each other, and whether either of the factors was related to empirical measures of cognitive and metacognitive performance. To test the current conceptualisation of metacognition that assumes two main factors confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed. AMOS software was used for performing CFA. Two experiments on 61 Premedical and 80 Medical Engineering Students supported the two factor model. Factors were correlated. Further experiments (Pearson's Correlation) reported a number of statistically significant relationships among knowledge of cognition, regulation of cognition, pre-test post-test judgements ability and performance. Strategies for the enhancement of students' metacognition were discussed.