Working on the assumptions that person, strategy, and task are essential metacognitive variables for explaining effective learning and that a reader's metacognitive knowledge about his or her strengths and limitations necessarily influences the types of strategies applied to different tasks, investigators studied the degree to which seventh and eighth grade readers could predict their level of proficiency in dealing with different task demands. Specifically, 98 seventh and eighth grade students were given a questionnaire developed to ascertain students' perceptions of their ability to complete essay and multiple-choice tests. Subjects then read one of two folk tales, took the appropriate test, retrospectively reported on the strategies they used, and freely recalled the folk tale read. Results indicated that when the scores on the essay and free recall measures were adjusted for prior reading achievement, the self-perceived high proficiency group performed significantly better than the self-perceived low proficiency group. There was also some evidence to suggest that students' perceptions of proficiency affected their choice of strategic activity. Namely, students who perceived themselves as having low proficiency in dealing with the criterial tasks reported "reading carefully/slowly" siqnificantly more often than those who perceived themselves as having high proficiency. Finally, an analysis of the effect of criterial task on strategy selection revealed that students who read and studied for an essay test "reread" more frequently than students who prepared for a multiple-choice test. (HOD)