Relationships among metamemory, motivation and memory performance in youngschool-age children

This study examines relationships among young children's metamemory, effort attributions and memory-cask performance. Eighty-one second and third grad ers participated in the study. The children were administered two study-rec all memory tasks using potentially clusterable items, and questionnaires to assess memory knowledge and effort attributions. Four path models predicti ng item recall, specifying strategy use at study and at recall as endogenou s variables and memory knowledge and effort attributions as exogenous varia bles, were compared. The best-fit model specified both (1) a direct effect of metamemory on item recall, and (2) a direct effect of metamemory and eff ort attributions on the use of a clustering strategy during the study perio d, and thus an indirect effect on item recall. Additionally, the findings a dd support to the argument chat the effects of memory influences may be cul turally linked.