Metacognition and Intelligence as Predictors of Academic Success

Schraw and Mohsman (1995; according to Schraw, Crippen and Hartley, 2006) define metacognition as the knowledge and regulation of cognitive processes. Unlike cognition, which only involves the execution of tasks, metacognition encompasses the understanding of how a task is accomplished. Metacognitive processes are important because they bring about conceptual changes in learning, thus enabling longer retention and different application of the material. In various studies, cognitive abilities have proven to be a significant predictor of academic success, the correlation coefficients between the general intelligence and school grades in primary school amounting to an average of about 0.5 (Neisser et al., 1996). Studies of metacognition and intelligence have shown that metacognition and cognitive abilities are two different constructs, and that a high degree of metacognitive self-regulation can compensate for a lower problem solving ability (Howard, McGee, Shia and Hong, 2001). The aim of our study was to examine the possibility to predict academic succes