Age differences in self-regulation of learning

The present research is focused on the development of different fields of self-regulation during adolescence and early adulthood. The study included participants from the following age groups: the pupils in the final classes of the primary school, aged 14–15 years, the youngsters in the secondary school (grammar school), aged 17–18 years, and the students, aged 22–23 years. To gain information on cognitive, metacognitive and motivational self-regulation of learning, we applied the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ; Pintrich, 1991). We also measured the metacognitive accuracy at problem solving, which should indicate the actual ability of metacognitive self-regulation. The results showed the following differences between the age groups: the perceived ability of self-regulation decreased within the high school period compared to the primary school group, and increased again into study years. The described tendency was not obtained with respect to metacognitive accuracy. Results showed an increase in the metacognitive accuracy throughout the entire age-span studied. There are also interesting differences between the sexes. The differences in the perceived ability of self-regulation between boys and girls were distinctive within the early adolescence period, diminished during the growing age, and disappeared almost completely in the period of late adolescence/early adulthood. The reason for this could most probably be the different tempo of self-regulation development between boys and girls