Daily videogame use and metacognitive knowledge of effective learning strategies

Metacognition refers to individuals’ knowledge and understanding of cognitive processes and cognitive strategies, in the self and others. In an educational context, 2 important aspects of metacognition relate to individuals’ awareness of the most effective strategies for summarizing novel information (i.e., for extracting meaning) and encoding novel information into long-term memory. Metacognition has been linked to executive function (Fernandez-Duque, Baird, & Posner, 2000), and evidence suggests that playing videogames can improve executive function and attentional control (Boot, Kramer, Simons, Fabiani, & Gratton, 2008; Green & Bavelier, 2007). Thus, videogame use may benefit metacognition. However, other research has found links between videogame use and attentional problems (Chan & Rabinowitz, 2006). Thus, we reanalysed data from >193,000 students, collected as part of the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), to investigate whether adolescent videogame use was systematically associated with students’ metacognitive awareness of the most effective methods of summarizing and encoding novel information. Using multilevel modeling, we found slightly lower scores in these 2 metacognitive domains for students who played videogames on a daily basis compared with those who played infrequently. Thus, daily videogame use was associated with slightly impoverished knowledge about effective learning strategies. Although these findings represent a potentially interesting and novel association between metacognition and videogame use, the small absolute size of these differences suggests the findings are not cause for alarm, particularly as they do not translate into poorer academic performance for regular (cf., less-frequent) video game users (Drummond & Sauer, 2014). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)