Shifting From Habitual To Agenda Processes During Decision-making For Study:A Developmental Perspective

Children in primary school are faced with a variety of decisions about how to regulate their study time across the to-be-learned materials during study. They need to decide whether or not to study, and the order of the priority of items chosen to selectively devote to goal-relevant information in order tooptimize task performance (Castel et al.2012). Thus, the ability to make study decisions that are related to meta-cognitive control processes substantially influences children’s and adult’s performance (Krebs and Roebers 2010; Thiede et al.2003), and is crucial in boosting learning and improving efficiency by allowing children to make profitable study decisions.The agenda-based regulation (ABR) framework of study-time allocation (Ariel et al.2009) proposed that learners’study decisions are influenced by both agenda-based and habitual processes (Dunlosky and Ariel 2011). Could children’study decisions be influenced by these two modes of regulation in a specific task environment? Considering that the extension of meta-cognitive control research from young adults to children has momentous practical and theoretical significance (Koriat 2012), in the present study, we investigated whether and at what age children will shift from habitual to agenda-based processes according to task constraints. This may provide sagacity into the developmental trajectory of sophisticated meta-cognitive control processes exhibited by young adults, and have pedagogical implications for educators.Two experiments were conducted to investigate the development of shifting from habitual to agenda-based processes on study decisions. A 6 (presentation order) by 3 (item reward) by 2 (time allowed) by 3 (grade) mixed design was used, with presentation order and item reward as within-subject factors, and the others as between-subject factors. A total of 309 students from the second, fourth, sixth grades participated in this study. On each trial, the students were presented with three cue words and a point value (1,3, or 5) for each. They could select any cue to study (in which case, its target would be presented) in any order. All words were of equal difficulty.In Experiment 1, the students selected items to study either with or without time constraint. The results showed that for sixth graders, the likelihood of selecting high-value items under the no-time-constraint condition was higher than that under the time-constraint condition; fourth graders and second graders failed to construct an agenda of prioritizing high-reward items for study in the no-time-constraint condition. In Experiment 2, when students were instructed to select one item to study per trial, high-value items were prioritized over items on the left of the array for all students.Based on the findings, the following conclusions were drawn:(a) children’sstudy decisions areinfluenced by two mode of regulations:agenda-based and habitualprocesses, (b) children could shift toward agenda-based process when habitual responding cannot maximize reward, and(c) there was an age-related improvement in shifting between grade 4 and grade 6.