A self-paced free recall task was employed to assess the effects of motivational and metacognitive influences on active processing and recall. A total of 81 fourth-graders were randomly assigned to one of four instructional conditions: strategy instructions plus process monitoring instructions; strategy instructions only; process monitoring instructions only; or a practice control group. Strategy instructions consisted of teaching children a cumulative rehearsal fast finish strategy and a less effective individual item repetition strategy. Process monitoring instructions involved talking with the children about the importance of using strategies to help them do their work better or easier and illustrating the principle with a simple, concrete task. It was hypothesized that the instructional manipulation would affect recall and strategy use by altering children's task specific beliefs and metacognitions. Effects of student characteristics and instructional condition were assessed for task-specific attributions and metacognitions, strategy use and recall on the post-test, near transfer, and far transfer tasks. Results indicated that both general and task-specific factors were significantly related to strategy use and recall. Prior to task instructions, motivational factors accounted for the significant variance, whereas following instructions, metacognitive variables increased in importance. (Author/RH)