Feedback helps children seek information to fill knowledge gaps

Effective self-regulated learning depends on metacognitive monitoring and control abilities, where learners monitor what they do not know and control their learning behaviour to address their knowledge gaps. However, children's metacognitive abilities are developing, which can hinder their ability to select relevant information effectively. This work examines whether providing feedback on children's knowledge can assist their metacognitive monitoring and control processes, improving their ability to target information-seeking to fill knowledge gaps. In two experiments, 5-9-year-old children (N = 203) completed a word-learning task on a tablet. They were then tested on their knowledge of the novel word-object associations and asked to report their (un)certainty in their answers. In the first experiment, children received feedback after each test trial. In both experiments, children received cumulative feedback at the end of the test. Next, they could select some of the objects to hear their labels again and were tested on their recognition of the label-object associations once more. In both experiments, feedback boosted children's ability to strategically seek information to fill their knowledge gaps. Children's information-seeking was better guided by feedback than by their own subjective uncertainty, indicating that feedback provides a valuable external means for metacognitive control. The kind of feedback provided, i.e., trial-by-trial or cumulative feedback, impacted children's metacognitive monitoring, while children's information seeking was predicted by both trial-by-trial and cumulative feedback. Overall, the findings underscore the role of feedback in fostering the development of metacognition and self-regulated learning in childhood.