Cognitive Predictors of Academic Achievement in Middle School Students

Academic achievement represents performance outcomes that indicate the extent to which a person has accomplished specific goals that were the focus of activities in school, college, and university. The performance of a student is influenced by multitude of cognitive and non-cognitive factors. In the present article, the relation between cognitive factors (metacognition & executive functions) and academic achievement was studied. For this purpose a sample of 100 middle school students were selected. Metacognition (Meta-Cognition Awareness Inventory) and executive functions (Executive Function Index) of the students was assessed. Academic performance record (marks obtained in the preceding class) of the students was obtained from the school record. The obtained data was analysed by computing correlation and regression in order to examine the relation between the cognitive variables and academic performance and identify the significant predicators. Results indicated that a dimension of executive function, motivation, was the strongest predictor of academic performance. Two other dimensions, organization (executive functions) and information management (metacognition) also emerged as predictors.