Relation between intellectual ability and metacognitive skillfulness as predictors of learning performance of young students performing tasks in different domains

The first objective of this study was to establish the relation between intellectual ability and metacognitive skillfulness as predictors of learning performance in young students (aged 12 years). Furthermore, the generality vs. domain-specificity of metacognitive skillfulness was investigated. Thirty-two first-year secondary-school students participated in this study. While thinking aloud they performed two different tasks representing two different domains: A text-studying task for history and a problem-solving task for mathematics. Participants' intelligence, metacognitive skillfulness and learning performance were assessed. Results show that metacognitive skillfulness contributed to learning performance (partly) independent of intellectual ability. Results also show that metacognitive skills predominantly appear to be general. Domain-specific metacognitive skills, however, played a substantial, but minor role as well.