Toward a General Model of Self-Regulated Study: An Analysis of Selection of Items for Study and Self-Paced Study Time

People of all ages are more likely to choose to restudy items (or allocate more study time to items) that are perceived as more difficult to learn than as less difficult to learn. Existing models of self-regulated study adequately account for this inverse relation between perceived difficulty of learning and these 2 measures of self-regulated study (item selection and self-paced study). However, these models cannot account for positive relations between perceived difficulty of learning and item selection, which are demonstrated in the present investigation. Namely, in Experiments 1 and 2, the authors described conditions in which people more often selected to study items judged as less difficult than as more difficult to learn. This positive relation was not demonstrated for self-paced study, which was always negatively correlated with judged difficulty to learn. In Experiments 3 through 6, the authors explored explanations for this dissociation between item selection and self-paced study. Discussion focuses on a general model of self-regulated study that includes planning, discrepancy reduction, and working-memory constraints.