The development of metacognitive causal explanations

Metacognitive causal explanations reflect a child's understanding about how or why a strategy works. Two studies examined the growth of metacognitive causal explanations over time. Study 1 found an increase in the sophistication of early elementary school children's causal explanations over a 3-year period, although the mean intelligence score in the group was relatively high. Study 2 was conducted with children from a wider range of intelligence. Only those children with higher intelligence scores were likely to shift to more sophisticated metacognitive causal explanations over a 2-year period. Results from the two studies together suggest that the relationship between intelligence and metacognitive knowledge is much more than monotonic throughout development [Dev. Rev. 15 (1995) 1]. Indeed, higher levels of intelligence increase the likelihood that children will move from less sophisticated to more sophisticated levels of metacognitive understanding, possibly laying the foundation for more sophisticated later learning.