Schools and universities devote considerable time and resources to developing students' social and emotional skills, such as emotional intelligence (EI). The goals of such programs are partly for personal development but partly to increase academic performance. The current meta-analysis examines the degree to which student EI is associated with academic performance. We found an overall effect of ρ = .20 using robust variance estimation (N = 42,529, k = 1,246 from 158 citations). The association is significantly stronger for ability EI (ρ = .24, k = 50) compared with self-rated (ρ = .12, k = 33) or mixed EI (ρ = .19, k = 90). Ability, self-rated, and mixed EI explained an additional 1.7%, 0.7%, and 2.3% of the variance, respectively, after controlling for intelligence and big five personality. Understanding and management branches of ability EI explained an additional 3.9% and 3.6%, respectively. Relative importance analysis suggests that EI is the third most important predictor for all three streams, after intelligence and conscientiousness. Moderators of the effect differed across the three EI streams. Ability EI was a stronger predictor of performance in humanities than science. Self-rated EI was a stronger predictor of grades than standardized test scores. We propose that three mechanisms underlie the EI/academic performance link: (a) regulating academic emotions, (b) building social relationships at school, and (c) academic content overlap with EI. Different streams of EI may affect performance through different mechanisms. We note some limitations, including the lack of evidence for a causal direction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Peer assessment has been the subject of considerable research interest over the last three decades, with numerous educational researchers advocating for the integration of peer assessment into schools and instructional practice. Research synthesis in this area has, however, largely relied on narrative reviews to evaluate the efficacy of peer assessment. Here, we present a meta-analysis (54 studies, k = 141) of experimental and quasi-experimental studies that evaluated the effect of peer assessment on academic performance in primary, secondary, or tertiary students across subjects and domains. An overall small to medium effect of peer assessment on academic performance was found (g = 0.31, p < .001). The results suggest that peer assessment improves academic performance compared with no assessment (g = 0.31, p = .004) and teacher assessment (g = 0.28, p = .007), but was not significantly different in its effect from self-assessment (g = 0.23, p = .209). Additionally, meta-regressions examined the moderating effects of several feedback and educational characteristics (e.g., online vs offline, frequency, education level). Results suggested that the effectiveness of peer assessment was remarkably robust across a wide range of contexts. These findings provide support for peer assessment as a formative practice and suggest several implications for the implementation of peer assessment into the classroom.

Dyslexia is characterized by difficulties in learning to read and there is some evidence that action video games (AVG), without any direct phonological or orthographic stimulation, improve reading efficiency in Italian children with dyslexia. However, the cognitive mechanism underlying this improvement and the extent to which the benefits of AVG training would generalize to deep English orthography, remain two critical questions. During reading acquisition, children have to integrate written letters with speech sounds, rapidly shifting their attention from visual to auditory modality. In our study, we tested reading skills and phonological working memory, visuo-spatial attention, auditory, visual and audio-visual stimuli localization, and cross-sensory attentional shifting in two matched groups of English-speaking children with dyslexia before and after they played AVG or non-action video games. The speed of words recognition and phonological decoding increased after playing AVG, but not non-action video games. Furthermore, focused visuo-spatial attention and visual-to-auditory attentional shifting also improved only after AVG training. This unconventional reading remediation program also increased phonological short-term memory and phoneme blending skills. Our report shows that an enhancement of visuo-spatial attention and phonological working memory, and an acceleration of visual-to-auditory attentional shifting can directly translate into better reading in English-speaking children with dyslexia.

Judgements of learning (JoL) are often used in memory research as a means for assessing an individual’s metacognitive beliefs about their learning. JoL have been shown to reliably predict performance as well as learning behaviours and decisions . Participants may, however, modify their behaviour in response to performing JoL. There has, however, been little consensus as to the reliability and direction of the effect. We report on a meta-analyses that assesses the evidence that memory performance is reactive to JoL. The results indicate that overall providing JoL does not have a significant effect on memory performance (g = 0.054, 95% CI −0.027 to 0.135). However, sub-groups analysis showed that this effect depends on the nature of the stimuli to be recalled, with moderate positive reactivity observed for related word pairs (g = 0.323, 95% CI 0.083 to 0.563) and word lists (g = 0.384, 95% CI 0.146 to 0.622) but no reactivity when pairs were unrelated or a mixture of related and unrelated pairs. These results indicate that researchers should be aware that eliciting JoL may well influence participants’ underlying encoding processes, especially when using related word pairs or word lists.

Metacognition is typically measured by collecting self-reported information from participants while they complete a cognitive task. Recent evidence suggests that eliciting such metacognitive information from participants can impact both their metacognitive processes and their cognitive performance. Although there are contradictory findings regarding the magnitude and even the direction of this effect, recent evidence has converged to provide a clearer picture of the mechanisms that determine reactivity. Here, we provide a review of the evidence that measures of metacognition, namely think-aloud protocols, judgments of learning, and confidence ratings, are reactive. We argue that reactivity has important implications not just for the measurement of metacognition, but for metacognition theorizing because reactivity can provide insights into the cues participants use to monitor their performance. Drawing from this synthesis of evidence, we propose a tentative framework for studying reactivity that integrates cue processing accounts of reactivity with existing models of metacognition. We conclude the review by addressing some of the pertinent questions yet to be comprehensively addressed by reactivity research, including how researchers should best address issues of reactivity when using experimental designs.