ABSTRACT
For several decades, psychological research on learning has focused on cognitive abilities and motivational factors as the two fundamental types of determinants of performance. In recent years, a third class of variables has been studied intensively. These variables refer to metacognitive processes that coordinate the cognitive skills involved in memory, reading, text comprehension, and so on (Brown, 1978; Flavell & Wellman, 1977; Weinert & Kluwe, 1987). For example, after children have acquired some metacognitive knowledge about the functional characteristics of memory, they start using this knowledge to improve memory performance (e.g., by testing their performance level, rehearsing the material when necessary). Compared to the extensive metacognitive research performed in recent years, higher-level skills controlling motivational processes have been neglected in research on learning. In this chapter, we would like to summarize some of our work related to metamotivation.
