College Adults Are Not Good at Self-Regulation

A Study on the Relationship of Self-Regulation, Note Taking, and Test Taking

Peverly, Stephen T.
Brobst, Karen E.
Graham, Mark
Shaw, Ray

¹Program in Applied Educational Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University
²Graduate School of Education, Fordham University
³Program in Cognitive Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University.

⁴Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stephen T. Peverly, Program in Applied Educational Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027-6696. E-mail: [email protected].

Received Date: August 30, 2002; Revised Date: December 17, 2002; Accepted Date: December 18, 2002

Journal of Educational Psychology 95(2):p 335-346, June 2003.

Self-regulation supposedly plays a central role in memory and learning, especially for adults. Research using simple materials has found that adults are skilled self-regulators. Research using difficult materials has found the opposite. Using difficult materials, the authors attempted to improve college students' self-regulation by allowing extended study time before taking a test. The authors also examined whether background knowledge and note-taking strategies would be positively related to self-regulation. Results indicated that college students were not good at self-regulation, background knowledge and note taking were not related to self-regulation, and note taking and background knowledge were generally better predictors of test performance than self-regulation. Results imply that test performance is more related to note taking and background knowledge than to self-regulation.