The objective of the study was to determine whether activating conditional knowledge
about appropriate strategies for studying a text would enhance self-efficacy and
comprehension monitoring. Seventy-six college students were assigned to one of two
conditions, with inference ability across conditions. In the activation condition,
subjects were given the opportunity to reflect on the importance of taking into
account time constraints, relevant features of the task, and the nature of the
subsequent comprehension test, when selecting appropriate study strategies. Subjects
in the control condition were not given the opportunity to reflect on their
knowledge before processing the text. The results showed that subjects in the
activation condition outperformed those in the control condition on reading
comprehension monitoring and on performance on the comprehension test, but not on
self-efficacy. Yet, self-efficacy was related to comprehension performance in the
control group but was not in the activation group. This result suggests that a
procedure which focuses subjects' attention on their own conditional strategic
repertoire before they proceed with a task may act upon the mechanisms through which
operates self-efficacy.
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