Metacognition: ideas and insights from neuro- and educational sciences

Abstract

Metacognition comprises both the ability to be aware of one’s cognitive processes (metacognitive knowledge) and to regulate them (metacognitive control). Research in educational sciences has amassed a large body of evidence on the importance of metacognition in learning and academic achievement. More recently, metacognition has been studied from experimental and cognitive neuroscience perspectives. This research has started to identify brain regions that encode metacognitive processes. However, the educational and neuroscience disciplines have largely developed separately with little exchange and communication. In this article, we review the literature on metacognition in educational and cognitive neuroscience and identify entry points for synthesis. We argue that to improve our understanding of metacognition, future research needs to (i) investigate the degree to which different protocols relate to the similar or different metacognitive constructs and processes, (ii) implement experiments to identify neural substrates necessary for metacognition based on protocols used in educational sciences, (iii) study the effects of training metacognitive knowledge in the brain, and (iv) perform developmental research in the metacognitive brain and compare it with the existing developmental literature from educational sciences regarding the domain-generality of metacognition.

Metacognition in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Digital Technologies in Metacognitive Skills Training

“…After this research, Flavell defined metacognition as the learners' awareness of their own cognition and cognitive processes (Flavell, 1979). Metacognition comprises both the ability to be aware of one's cognitive processes and to manage them effectively (Fleur et al, 2021). According to Nelson and Narens (1994) two fundamental components are required: metacognitive monitoring and meta-control.…”

Reverse engineering of metacognition

“…The human ability to judge the quality of one’s own choices, actions and percepts by means of confidence ratings has been subject to scientific inquiry since the dawn of empirical psychology ( Pierce and Jastrow, 1885 ; Fullerton and Cattell, 1892 ), albeit it has long been limited to specific research niches. More recently, research on human confidence, and metacognition more generally, has accelerated and branched off to other domains such as mental illnesses ( Rouault et al, 2018 ; Hoven et al, 2019 ; Moritz and Lysaker, 2019 ; Seow et al, 2021 ) and education ( Fleur et al, 2021 ). Two main quantitative characteristics have emerged to describe subjective reports of confidence: metacognitive bias and metacognitive sensitivity .…”

Students With High Metacognition Are Favourable Towards Individualism When Anxious

“…Those results point out that a subjective measurement of metacognition—such as the MAI—may not predict concrete skills, such as PS performance. With respect to the online measure, although we had one, metacognitive efficiency has been scarcely used in educational studies and its relationship to other measures has not been studied thoroughly ( Fleur et al, 2021 ). Furthermore, in comparison to other online measures, metacognitive efficiency has some qualities that make it different, namely, it lacks the biases that judgements of confidence or learning have, its independent from first-order performance, and its relationship to consciousness is not well known ( Rahnev et al, 2021 ).…”