Psychology Facts

▼ Metacognition ▼

》Metacognition is the ability to monitor and adaptively control one's cognitive processing or thinking about thinking. Self-awareness of one's memory serves the function of allowing individuals to avoid situations where they lack knowledge which is needed.

》John Flavell first started to study and theorize about metacognition in the late 1970s. Flavell believed that there were two parts to metacognition:

Metacognitive knowledge

Metacognitive regulation

》Metacognitive knowledge

Metacognitive Knowledge is the information we know of ourselves and about others.

There are three types of metacognitive knowledge:

Declarative Knowledge

Procedural Knowledge

Strategy Knowledge

Declarative knowledge is knowledge about your own capabilities. Let's use the example of names.
You may either say you're good with names or bad with names. That is based on declarative knowledge.

Procedural knowledge is the knowledge of a task at hand. The breadth of the task, and how much of the task you can complete, is included in procedural knowledge. You may be able to remember one person's name at a time, but completely give up at the idea of remembering the names of five people all standing in a group with you.

Strategy knowledge is the knowledge of using strategies (and remembering to use strategies) in order to undergo cognition. Let's say that you know that rhyming a person's name with a funny nickname (i.e. "Dave the Shave" or "Lori the Story") will help you remember their name better. Implementing that strategy requires strategy knowledge.

Metacognitive strategies include:

Asking questions and evaluating what
assumptions you made to come to conclusions and how possible bias influenced that conclusion

Using autonomous learning to challenge your beliefs

Learning with the help of a mentor or group
Thinking aloud

Rehearsing or memorizing information

Organizing information with outlines, lists, etc.

Explaining different subjects to yourself in your own words

Allowing yourself to make errors and asking yourself where those errors may have come from

》Metacognitive Regulation

Metacognition regulation refers to the ability for to control your learning.

Metacognition allows us to monitor learning and exert control to make sure we get the most out of the information that we are receiving. This is done through three stages:

Planning

Monitoring

Evaluation

These stages cannot only be applied to any cognitive task, but also any other task that you have in mind. If you want to remember more, exercise more, floss more, you'll need to plan out a strategy for achieving that goal, monitor your progress, and evaluate how your efforts and strategies helped (or didn't help you) in the end.

We pull from our experiences to create metacognitive beliefs. We can also create metacognitive experiences that further influence how we approach problems and learn new information.