Academic procrastination is a prevalent and pernicious self-regulation failure, which affects students' academic performance, health, and well-being. We conducted a systematic review of the recent (i.e., 2018 and subsequent) literature on the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce academic procrastination in several relevant online…

Self-regulated learning depends on task difficulty and on learners' resources and cognitive load, as described by an inverted U-shaped relationship in Seufert's (2018) model: for easy tasks, resources are high and load is low, so there is no need to regulate, whereas for difficult tasks, load is too high and resources are too low to regulate. Only…

Poor math and numeracy skills are associated with a range of adverse outcomes, including reduced employability and poorer physical and mental health. Research has increasingly focused on understanding factors associated with the improvement of math skills in school. This systematic literature review and meta-analysis investigated the association…

Efklides and colleagues developed the Metacognitive and Affective model of Self-Regulated Learning (MASRL) to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework of self-regulated learning (SRL). The distinguishing feature of MASRL is that it stresses metacognitive experiences and other subjective experiences (e.g., motivational, affective) as critical…

Self-regulated learning (SRL) and executive functions (EF) are broad concepts stemming from different research areas. They have been defined and modeled in various ways and are repeatedly related to each other in the literature, but so far, no systematic analyses of these relations have been published. Therefore, a systematic analysis of their…

Prior testing can facilitate subsequent learning, a phenomenon termed the forward testing effect (FTE). We examined a metacognitive account of this effect, which proposes that the FTE occurs because retrieval leads to strategy optimizations during later learning. One prediction of this account is that tests that require less retrieval effort…

In the context of instructional design and self-regulated learning research, the notion of mental effort allocation, monitoring, and control has gained increasing attention. Bringing together a cognitive perspective, focusing on Cognitive Load Theory, and a motivational perspective, merging central accounts from Situated Expectancy Value Theory…

Accurately monitoring one's learning processes during self-regulated learning depends on using the right cues, one of which could be perceived mental effort. A meta-analysis by Baars et al. (2020) found a negative association between mental effort and monitoring judgments (r = -0.35), suggesting that the amount of mental effort experienced during…

In higher education, many students make poor learning strategy decisions. This, in part, results from the counterintuitive nature of effective learning strategies: they enhance long-term learning but also cost high initial effort and appear to not improve learning (immediately). This mixed-method study investigated how students make learning…

The widespread benefits of creativity have become more salient in recent years. This has led to scholarly interest in finding ways to foster creativity. Nature immersion may be one way to enhance creativity, particularly as many individuals involved in creative pursuits have found nature to be a source of inspiration and a haven for restoration.…

Accurate monitoring of performance in problem-solving tasks is an important prerequisite for students' future academic success. A wide variety of interventions aiming to enhance students' monitoring accuracy have been developed, but their effectiveness is not apparent from the individual studies in which they have been examined. This meta-analysis…

Solving problems in educational settings, as in daily-life scenarios, involves constantly assessing one's own confidence in each considered solution. Metacognitive research has exposed cues that may bias confidence judgments (e.g., familiarity with question terms). Typically, metacognitive research methodologies require examining misleading cues…

Training of self-regulated learning is most effective if it supports learning strategies in combination with metacognitive regulation, and learners can transfer their acquired metacognitive regulation skills to different tasks that require the use of the same learning strategy (near transfer). However, whether learners can transfer metacognitive…

Distinguishing easily confusable categories requires learners to detect their predictive differences. Interleaved sequences -- switching between categories -- help learners to detect such differences. Nonetheless, learners prefer to block -- switching within a category -- to detect commonalities. Across two 2 × 2-factorial experiments, we…

Over 100 years of research shows that retrieval practice is highly effective for enhancing student learning. When managing their own study behaviors, however, students tend to avoid using retrieval practice as a way of learning. Understanding and improving students' study decisions is important given the increasingly autonomous nature of…