Fifty-four high aptitude undergraduates and 46 moderate-to-low aptitude undergraduates were divided into four treatment groups and were given a pretest during which they learned and recalled a map of a small town in five successive trials. Two weeks later, each group was given a different treatment with a varying degree of explicitness of inducement to use a set of effective metacognitive learning strategies. Each learner completed questionnaires indicating their degree of use of each of 20 cognitive learning strategies. The results indicated that those learners who were given the most explicit instruction in successful metacognitive strategies performed nearly twice as well as the other three groups. Those metacognitive procedures involving the application of planning, monitoring, and evaluation behaviors were consistently preferred by successful learners. The use of these procedures was highly correlated with successful recall performance. The training treatment was equally successful for learners from two widely disparate college-age populations (differing by Scholastic Aptitude Test Scores). The results indicated that successful map learning depended on the application of metacognitive strategies. It was concluded that less successful learners could be trained to use these successful strategies, thus overcoming initial limitations. (Author/GDC)