METACOGNITIVE MONITORING ACCURACY IN TERMS OF COMPLEXITY / EASE OF TASKS

Abstract

The paper is focused on the analysis of some theoretical and empirical aspects of the relationship between the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring and the assessment of the complexity / ease of tasks. With the help of theoretical analysis and empirical research we aim at revealing the role of complexity / ease of tasks in the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring of students, analysing how accurately students can perform tasks according to certain levels of complexity / ease of tasks, etc. During the test, with the help of metacognitive monitoring judgments students assessed the level of complexity / ease of the tasks by answering the EOTs questions about the complexity / ease of each task. The results showed the nonlinear nature of the ratio of subjective complexity / ease of tasks and the actual level of complexity / ease of tasks. It is noteworthy that students are usually inaccurate in their metacognitive judgments and inaccurate metacognitive monitoring is more spread when the information submitted for processing is more complex, and, accordingly, less when the tasks are easier. In general, the analysis of this assessment of all tasks showed that 68.2% of respondents rated the tasks as easy, while 31.8% of them identified the tasks as difficult. In the assessed easier tasks, the majority of respondents – 21% – showed underconfidence, and only 5.2% showed overconfidence. In the tasks of medium level of complexity, 12.6% of respondents showed the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring by type “TMM++”. 17.5% and 16.5% of students, respectively, showed overconfidence in more complex tasks. The benefit is that the results of the study can play an important role in understanding the relationship between the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring and the academic performance of university students.