The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that plagues a particular population of students--the unskilled. This population suffers from illusory competence, as determined by inaccurate ratings of their own ability/performance. These mistakenly high self-ratings (i.e. ''illusions of competence'') are typically explained by a metacognitive…

Few studies have focused specifically on the role that language plays in learning chemistry. We report here an investigation into the ability of language comprehension measures to predict performance in university introductory chemistry courses. This work is informed by theories of language comprehension, which posit that high-skilled…