ABSTRACT
Metacognitive monitoring and control both play an important role in reading comprehension—the goal of reading——and there are promising techniques for improving students’ metacognition when they read. This chapter focuses on understanding the role of metacognition in reading, sources of metacognition problems, and ways to remedy these problems—all of which can be powerful tools for improving adults’ reading comprehension. Researchers have used many different approaches to measure metacognitive monitoring during reading. One way to measure metacognitive monitoring is to ask people to “think out loud” while reading. A second way to measure metacognitive monitoring is to ask people to answer reading comprehension questions and then rate their confidence in their answers. A third way to measure monitoring is to insert mistakes into a text—either contradictory statements or statements that are untrue—and ask readers to find them. A fourth way to measure monitoring is to put mistakes in text and see how often people reread the sentences that include contradictory information.
