In this article, we investigated how preschool children's metacognitive judgments influence subsequent study-time allocation in self-paced study. Especially, we focused on whether or not they would change their study activities (study-time allocation and item-selection) depending on the difference of the performance goal. In the pilot study, preschool children distributed longer study-time to the item they judged to be unable to recall, when they studied at their own pace after metacognitive judgments. It was found that preschool children have basic metacognitive control abilities. In main study, we experimented by manipulating the performance goal (difficult vs. easy) as the pilot study. Regardless of the levels of difficulty (performance goal), they selected the items which they judged of insufficient learned. Those results suggest that preschool children could control their learning by subjective learning-monitoring. But, it is difficult for preschool children to control their learning according to the learning plan which they take related information (e.g., performance goal) into consideration.
