The Effect Of Gender, Confirmation Bias, And Metacognitive Self Assessment Over Varying Levels Of Expertise In A Visuospatial Task

Abstract

It has been shown that there exists a relationship between levels of metacognitive ability and estimation of personal ability for largely verbally-based tasks, where those with lessened facility for the task tend toward overestimation of their aptitude relative to their peers (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). This study examines this effect for a task of mechanical ability for volunteer participants (n = 69), where participants were given an abbreviated form of the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test (BMCT) to establish a level of competency. Following the administration of the BMCT, the participants were then asked to speculate on the hypothetical grade for their performance, as well as the relationship between their hypothetical grade, and the grades of others. Participants then "tutored" a hypothetical student on the solution to one of the problems found on the BMCT, and their explanations were coded for degree of bias towards confirmation versus disconfirmation that was utilized in the problem solving. It was found that females' basic ability had a greater range than males', and females on the high and low ends of competency made greater use of confirming strategies in their problem solving. This is indicative of the overall observed interaction effect between Gender, Perceived Relative Competence, and Actual Competence observed in this study.

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