The Role of Metacognition and Anxiety in College Students’ Performance on a General-Knowledge Test

Abstract

This study was interested in the role of metacognition, confidence, and question type in student’s likelihoods of changing responses to general-knowledge questions. Participants were given two tasks, a general-knowledge multiple-choice test that contained both tricky and non-tricky questions accompanied by confidence judgments and indications for why they chose their answers and a second task which consisted of a test review packet for an opportunity to change and re-assess confidence in questions. Students opted to change very few answers when given the opportunity to do so and when they changed they were more likely to change tricky questions than non-tricky questions. Students were significantly more confident in answers for non-tricky questions and the younger a student was corresponded with higher ratings of confidence. Overall, results suggest that future research should force participants to change answers and to analyze shifts in confidence and reasons for changing answers for both initial and changed responses.