Social influences on metacognition: Effects of colearner questioning on comprehension monitoring.

Four experiments examined social influences on metacognition, testing whether learners' knowledge that colearners have questions about material they are simultaneously viewing affects learners' own judged levels of comprehension. In Experiment 1 (n = 88), the frequency with which learners indicated they were confused increased with the number of questions they believed colearners had about the material. Experiment 2 (n = 38) determined that the effect of colearner questioning on self-judged comprehension was not due to distraction or social facilitation. Experiment 3 (n = 100) replicated the results of Experiment I and found that the social impact on learners' judgments of comprehension was less when questions were believed to have come from 3 colearners rather than 1. Experiment 4 (n = 60) suggested that the number of questions per colearner determines their impact on others' comprehension judgments.