This study investigated how 8th graders control their learning activities with respect to the difficulty of learning-goals (difficult vs. easy) and available time for learning (long vs. short). We examined children's learning activities in four different experimental conditions: (1) difficult-goal & short-time, (2) easy-goal & short-time, (3) difficult-goal & long-time, (4) easy-goal & long-time. As a result, in all 4 conditions, children chose items that they judged as difficult for their target items to learn. As for the study time, regardless of the learning conditions, there were no correlations between the children's ratings for difficulty and allocated study-time. In three conditions ((2), (3), (4)), they spent the longest time not on the items judged as worse, but on the most difficult items. These results suggested that 8th graders could not effectively change their learning activities according to the different learning conditions. Yet, they did effectively control their learning activities by allocating study-time according to the "region of proximal learning."
