On Wednesday, 18 March 2026, CIBM was delighted to host Mariette van Loon from the University of Zurich, for a Visitors Talk. Mariette gave a presentation entitled “The development of metacognitive monitoring and control skills”
The session, hosted by Solange Denervaud, CIBM Flagship Project Officer, brought together around 20 researchers both online and in person at the CIBM seminar room in EPFL, Lausanne.
The development of metacognitive monitoring and control skills
Self-monitoring and control of learning are central components of metacognition. Monitoring refers to judgments about understanding and performance, for example how certain a person is that they have understood learned material. Control involves the actions taken on the basis of these monitoring judgments, such as deciding to restudy items for which one is uncertain. Metacognitive skills are highly important for learning, and recent findings suggest that they are even more predictive of school achievement than intelligence. Monitoring and control skills develop gradually across childhood and adolescence, with substantial individual differences between children in their metacognitive skills and their development. In this talk, I will discuss how metacognition can be measured on task, show findings on its development, and examine its relation to cognitive abilities and learning outcomes.
Mariette van Loon
Institute of Psychology at the University of Zurich
Mariette van Loon studied Psychology at Utrecht University and completed her PhD in Educational Psychology at Maastricht University. After a postdoctoral position in Bern, she now holds an SNF Starting Grant Professorship at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on the development of metacognitive skills in children and adolescents, their relation to cognitive capacity and cognitive development more broadly, and their predictive effects on learning.