Metacognitive judgments-of-learning in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.
Autistic teens accurately judge how well they have learned something and will regulate their own study time—so let them.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wojcik et al. (2014) asked 24 autistic teens to study word pairs. After each pair, the teen guessed how well they would remember it. Later they chose how long to restudy each pair.
The team compared these guesses and study choices to those of 24 typical peers. All kids were 13-18 years old and spoke in full sentences.
What they found
Autistic teens guessed their future memory just as well as typical teens. When they thought a pair was hard, they gave it more study time. Their choices matched their guesses almost perfectly.
In short, the teens knew what they did not know and acted on it.
How this fits with other research
McGarty et al. (2018) saw the same accuracy in autistic adults judging face-emotion memory. Together, the two studies show metacognition stays intact across age and task type.
Godfrey et al. (2023) looks like a contradiction at first. They found autistic youth forgot story details faster and failed to use gist strategies. The key difference is time: Z tested quick judgments and study choices, while Mary tested memory after days. Autistic learners monitor well in the moment but need help holding on to complex stories later.
Morsanyi et al. (2012) also reported reasoning gaps in similar teens. The new data update the picture: reasoning may lag, but self-monitoring of memory does not.
Why it matters
You can trust autistic teens to pace their own learning. Let them pick which flashcards to review, how long to spend, and when they feel ready for a quiz. Build choice into your sessions instead of controlling every timing cue. Save your teaching time for bigger skills like story recall and real-life reasoning, where extra support is still needed.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated metacognitive monitoring abilities in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in two experiments using the judgment-of-learning paradigm. Participants were asked to predict their future recall of unrelated word pairs during the learning phase. Experiment 1 compared judgments-of-learning made immediately after learning and judgments-of-learning made after a delay. We found that both groups overestimated their memory performance but that overall there were no group differences in judgment-of-learning accuracy. Additionally, both groups displayed the standard delayed judgment-of-learning effect (yielding greater judgment accuracy in delayed compared to immediate judgments), suggesting that both groups were able to use appropriate information in making their judgments-of-learning. Experiment 2 assessed whether adolescents with autism spectrum disorder could regulate their study time according to their judgments-of-learning using a self-paced learning procedure. Results showed that both groups spent more time learning items given lower judgments-of-learning. Finally, Experiment 2 showed that judgments-of-learning and study time varied according to item difficulty in both groups. As a whole, these findings demonstrate that adolescents with autism spectrum disorder can accurately gauge their memory performance while learning new word associations and use these skills to control their study time at learning.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2014 · doi:10.1177/1362361313479453