Two studies were conducted to investigate childrers study-time allocation. In Study 1, we investigated how many 6th and 8th graders could use the strategy of flexibly allocating the study time, depending on the difficulty of the learning-goal. It was found that the number of such children increased gradually from 2nd to 8th grade; importantly, about 40% of the 6th and 8th graders have acquired the same strategic knowledge as college students (e. g., When the difficulty level of the learning-goal is set low, they avoid the strategy _ of learning all the items, but instead try to learn selectively the items that they judged to be easy) . In Study 2, we further examined whether or not 6th and 8th graders would actually perform, using such strategic knowledge observed in Study l. The findings indicated, however, that they did not use that strategy, even though they reported to possess it as knowl-edge. Those unexpected findings might be because the children might perceive that this learning situation did not require the use of such a strategy.
