Sense and nonsense of metacognition as ‘second order skills’ in relation to specific learning disorders

Özet

Öz After an introduction on ‘second order skills ‘(metacognition, Executive Functions or EF, self-regulation andEffortfull Control or EC) and on specific learning disorders (dyslexia/dyscalculia), we focus on the ‘nexus’between both constructs in five studies. In study 1 we compared prediction and evaluation skills in childrenwith and without learning disabilities. In addition we revealed that children with procedural dyscalculia hadpoor prediction and evaluation skills (study 2) and that persons with dyslexia and dyscalculia had belowaverage working memory and planning skills (cold EF – study 3) with children with dyslexia also havingproblems with inhibition (hot EF – study 4). When analyzing metacognition in adolescents study 5demonstrated that poor spellers are also were poor in detecting spelling mistakes. Moreover study 6demonstrated that high functioning adolescents with dyslexia show a lot of similarities on hot and cold EFwith peers without dyslexia. Finally study 7 demonstrated that metacognition can be trained in the case of a‘production deficiency’ with an informed, prolonged and embedded training and that metacognition can beconsidered from a Universal Design for Leaning (UDL) perspective as ‘tool’ taking into account the differentProcess Communication Model (PCM) personality types (Kahler, 2008; Pauley & Pauley, 2012).