Participants:  Participants include a small population of both monolingual and bilingual children from an elementary school in Manchester, NH.  The participants for this study were recruited based on their enrollment in a 4th or 5th grade class.  All students are from the same geographical area and are between the ages of 9 and 11.  The sample size in this study includes 9 monolingual students and 10 bilingual students.  The bilingual population sample includes students who speak English as a second language and some of whom were born outside the USA.

Materials and Design:  A Metamemory Battery Assessment Test (Pierce & Lange, 2000) was individually administered to each of the participants.  The metamemory questionnaire was retained for the present study.  The test consists of eight questions; questions 1 through 6 assess general memory knowledge, question 7 assesses specific strategy knowledge, and question 8 assesses the child's concurrent memory monitoring.  The 6 general memory knowledge items were selected from a larger collection of items developed by Kreutzer et al. (1975). Question 7 was originally developed by Lange, Guttentag, and Nida (1990), and represents a more elaborate version of Kreutzer, Leonard, & Flavell’s (1975) study, in which children were asked what they could do to learn a set of pictures that were potentially clusterable into conceptual categories.  Question 8, the memory-monitoring question, assesses the child's knowledge of his or her short-term memory capacity and his or her ability to adjust recall estimates based on a prior recall experience.
     Some of the questions were more open-minded than others, causing a diverse number of possible correct responses.  Questions 1 and 2, preparation object and preparation event, both assess the child's knowledge of planful behavior in preparing for the future retrieval of an object.  Question 3, retrieval object, assesses the child's knowledge of search and inquiry skills for the retrieval of a lost or misplaced object.  Question 4, rote-paraphrase, measures the child's awareness of the relative ease of gist recall over rote recall.  Question 5, story-list, measures the child’s knowledge of the effect of elaboration on recall and question 6, opposites-arbitrary, assesses the child’s knowledge about how list structure and knowledge base might assist recall.
    Question 7, originally developed by Lange, Guttentag, and Nida (1990), assesses the child's specific strategy knowledge. Four panels were used during this exercise, each arranged in a different structural array of 12 pictures (3 categories of 4 pictures each): a set of taxonomic category groupings, a set of color groupings, a set of random groupings, and a randomly arranged circular array.  The panels were presented to each participant in pairs, (6 presented pairs) requiring the child to select 1 of the 2 presented panels of organized or non-organized pictures as easier to remember.  Question 8, the memory- monitoring question, measures the child's knowledge of his/her short-term memory capacity and his/her ability to adjust recall estimates based on a prior recall experience (Pierce & Lange, 2000).
    In addition to the Metamemory Battery, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition (PPVT-III)(Dunn & Dunn, 1997) was individually administered to each participant taking approximately 12 minutes to complete.  The PPVT-III is an untimed, norm-referenced, wide-range test containing 204 test items grouped into 17 sets of 12 items each.  The items sets are arranged in order of increasing difficulty.  Each item consists of four black-and-white illustrations arranged on a page called a Picture Plate.  For each Picture Plate shown, the participants were asked to select the picture that best represented the meaning of the stimulus word, which was orally presented by the examiner.  The PPVT-III is one aspect in a comprehensive test battery of cognitive processes, and is a measure of the examinee’s receptive (hearing) vocabulary, as well as a screening test of verbal ability.  The PPVT-III is a culturally- fair instrument used to measure listening comprehension for spoken words in Standard English (Dunn & Dunn, 1997).
    The purpose of these two tests was to predict whether or not certain metacognitive abilities may be linked to bilingualism, namely memory strategies.  All participants were debriefed at the conclusion of the study.  It is important to note that in analyzing the data, no child was mentioned by name, and only group data was analyzed and reported.

Procedure:  A consent form was administered to the parents of each participant prior to the study.  It outlined the basic goals and procedures of the study.  It also encouraged the parent/guardian to contact the experimenter with any questions or concerns.  Prior to testing, all participants were briefed regarding the basic research procedures and gave their consent before participating.  Testing took place over the course of three days (approximately 30 minutes per student), and participants were chosen in random order.
     Each examinee sat across from the examiner while each test was administered.  Each participant was first given instructions on how to respond to the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and asked to complete practice exercises to ensure their understanding of the task.  After determining the basal set of items (1 or no errors in a set of items), students responded to a series of vocabulary words, and were asked to point to, or verbalize which picture best represented the meaning of each stimulus word; the examiner presented each word orally.  Once the ceiling item was reached (at least 8 incorrect answers in one set), the test was discontinued and scores were recorded.
     Participants were then administered the Metamemory Battery and were asked to answer each of the 8 questions to the best of their ability.  Questions 1-4 required each participant to respond using prior knowledge and experience.  Questions 5-8 required each participant to respond using both prior knowledge and experience, and new information presented to them.  Participants were scored according to specific responses given and to plausible explanations of the responses.  The maximum possible score for each individual was 36.  Each question was asked in the same way to each participant to ensure equal opportunities to respond.  Both tests were presented in a way that provoked no stress or anxiety to the child taking it.  At the conclusion of both tests, each participant was debriefed and encouraged to ask questions pertaining to the study.