Metacognition refers to thinking about cognition (memory, perception, calculation, association, etc.) itself or to the thinking/reasoning about own thinking. Metacognition involves two types of knowledge: explicit, conscious, factual knowledge; and implicit/unconscious knowledge.

The ability to think about thinking is unique to sapient species and indeed is one of the definitions of sapience.

In practice, meta-cognition refers to the study of meta-reasoning, consciousness/awareness and auto-consciousness/self-awareness. These capacities are requested for the management of human own activities physical and mental, as well as to the management of other intelligent beings.

In this way, metacognition is also practiced to attempt to regulate one's own cognition, and maximize one's potential to think, learn and to the evaluation of proper ethical/moral rules.

The metacognition research is the area of the natural and artificial intelligence study and modeling. Therefore it is the domain of interest of emergent systemics and socio-cognitive engineering, see the TOGA meta-theory (Adam Maria Gadomski).

Metacognitive strategies

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The metacognitive-like processes are ubiquitous; especially, when it comes to the discussion of self-regulated learning. Being engaged in metacognition is a salient feature of good self-regulated learners. The activities of strategy selection and application include those concerned with an ongoing attempt to plan, check, monitor, select, revise, evaluate, etc. Metacognition is 'stable' in that learners' initial decisions derive from the pertinent fact about their cognition through years of learning experience. Simultaneously, it is also 'situated' in the sense that it depends on learners' familiarity with the task, motivation, emotion, and so forth. Individuals need to regulate their thoughts about the strategy they are using and adjust it based on the situation the strategy is applied to.

References

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• Barell, J. (1992), “Like an incredibly hard algebra problem: Teaching for metacognition” In A. L. Costa, J. A. Bellanca, & R. Fogarty (eds.) If minds matter: A foreword to the future, Volume I (pp. 257-266). Palatine, IL: IRI/Skylight Publishing, Inc.
• Burke, K. (1999), “The Mindful School: How to Assess Authentic Learning” (3rd ed.), SkyLight Training and Publishing, USA. ISBN 1-57517-151-1

See also

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• Introspection
• Educational psychology
• Educational technology
• Learning styles

Related links

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• Buffalo.edu - 'Metacognition: An Overview', Jennifer A. Livingston, (1997)
• PHULE.net - 'Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments', Justin Kruger, David Dunning, Cornell University, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 77, no 6, p 1121-1134, American Psychological Association (1999)
• UIUC.edu - 'Metacognitive knowledge'
• 'Metacognition in Computation overview, links'
• Personoids - a reasoning on different information, preferences, knowledge (IPK) levels

Cognitive science | Educational technology | Educational psychology

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