Metacognition

Metacognition is cognition about cognition: a collection of related skills that allow us to reflect upon our own thinking

• knowledge about how the mind works
• monitoring the quality of our own thoughts
• controlling behavior through good strategies
• ability to introspect (Descartes- I think therefore I am)

Metacognition in Children #

• Children experience and communicate confidence (in tone of voice, quickness in answers, etc)
• Confidence may not always match the true state of the world (miscalibration)

How do we measure metacognition in children if they are not always honest about their thoughts?

• Kid-friendly introspection: “really sure, kind of sure, or not so sure” vs “how confident are you on a scale from 1 to 10”
• If there is a difference in reported confidence between incorrect and correct answers, we have successfully measured the ability to monitor

In general, children are overconfident (say they are confident more often than not). This overconfidence decreases with age as metacognition becomes more calibrated.

• We are not entirely sure if metacognition itself improves, or if our ability to report metacognition improves (or both).

Measuring Metacognition #

Is it possible to detect metacognition without reporting introspection?

• help-seeking: more likely to ask for help if not confident about answer
• information gathering
• persistence
• betting: willingness to bet more if more confident
• opting out
• pupil dilation
• error-related negativity
• hesitation, use of filler words Generally: put subjects into situations where they should either feel confident or unconfident, and measure some difference in their behavior.
• Goupil, Rommand-Monnier, Kouider 2016: 20 month old infants are either directly shown an object, or hidden from the object. The infants are more likely to ask for help in the hidden case, suggesting that they are monitoring their knowledge and controlling their behavior based on that knowledge.
• Beran et al 2015: orangutans who are confident that they gave a correct answer in a trial expect a reward, even if the reward is delayed in some trials. However, they do not show this persistence if they got the answer wrong. Strategically reacting to uncertainty is not restricted to subjects who can report their introspections.
• not much cross-cultural research done

Implicit vs Explicit Metacognition #

Implicit (Procedural) Metacognition:

• ability to react to uncertainty (asking for help)
• using confidence to guide actions and decisions
• not necessarily a conscious process
• broadly seen in many species (infant humans, chimps/apes, dogs, rats)

Explicit (Declarative) Metacognition:

• Ability to report confidence to others
• Generate metacognitive knowledge: create good strategies based on thought processes
• Actively thinking about your own thoughts
• So far, only seen in humans older than 3 years of age

Why is explicit metacognition unique to humans? #

• Understanding of language gives us a framework to think about thoughts
• Humans are highly social -> ability to report thoughts and confidence allows us to make collective decisions based on who is most confident
• Theory of mind: ability to use language like “I know”, “I’m sure”, “I think”
  • In traditional literature, theory of mind and metacognition do not seem to be correlated