ON THE MEASUREMENT OF METAMEMORY ASPECTS IN CHILDREN

In the last few years, an increasing number of developmental and educa tional studies on children's metamemory has been conducted. In this co ntext, the poor psychometrical characteristics of many metamemory meas ures have stimulated calls for more standardized and reliable tests. T he present report is concerned with the endeavour to provide a German version of the metamemory battery developed by Belmont and Borkowski ( 1988). Sixty second graders and 60 fourth graders individually worked through a modified translation with three subtests of the metamemory b attery (''Organized List'', ''Preparation Object'', ''Memory Estimatio n'') twice within three to four weeks. Internal consistency of the tot al test score was not given. Sufficient levels of retest correlations were obtained for ''Organized List'' and - to a somewhat lower degree - for ''Preparation Object''. A discussion of theoretical implications as well as suggestions for possible usages of the test in metamemory research are provided.