Abstract: Metacomprehension monitoring refers to the process of a reader monitoring and evaluating his or her understanding of a text. Participants may make metacomprehension monitoring judgments by either rating how much they understand a text, or predicting how well they can do in a comprehension test. Previous research seems to treat these questions as interchangeable and which one to use as a matter of convenience. Researchers have not investigated whether or not these questions may tap different metacomprehension monitoring processes. In this study, we compared two kinds of monitoring, namely, rating comprehension and predicting performance, by examining the way they were affected by two different orienting tasks that may provide different cues for the monitoring process.
165 college students at South China Normal University participated in this experiment. Three between-subject factors were manipulated. The participants were divided into keyword groups or pretest groups. The keyword group was divided into generating or reading group, the pretest group was divided into taking a pretest or reading the pretest with answers provided after reading all the six expository texts on a computer. Half of each group either rated their comprehension of each text or predicted their performance in a comprehension test on a 0~6 scale. All participants took a comprehension test on each text. Three questions assessed text-based knowledge (details available within a single paragraph of a text), and three inferential questions assessed knowledge of a situation model.
The results showed that there were no significant effects on magnitudes of JOL. The interaction effect between orienting tasks and activity of the task on criterion test performance was significant. The performance for the taking pretest condition was higher than the reading pretest condition, whereas the generating keyword groups did not differ from the reading keyword groups. As far as monitoring accuracy (Gamma) was concerned, the interaction effect between types of monitoring and orienting tasks was significant. The simple main effect tests revealed that when the participants predicted their test performance, the pretest condition led to more accurate judgments than the keyword condition, whereas when they rated comprehension, the reverse was found.
Metacomprehension monitoring accuracies as found with rating text understanding and predicting test performance were affected by two orienting tasks in different ways. The cues produced by taking a pretest may be useful for predicting the scores of a final test, but may not be useful for estimating how well a text is understood. The cues produced by generating keywords seem useful for readers to judge their understanding of one text relative to another, but may not be useful for them to calibrate their predictions of test scores. The results challenge the view that metacomprehension monitoring is a unitary process. Given our results, it is reasonable to conclude that rating comprehension and predicting performance may tap different aspects of metacomprehension monitoring

Key words: metacomprehension monitoring, accuracy, rate comprehension, predict performance