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According to John Flavell who introduced metacognition, Metacognition is a higher-order thinking process which involves the ability to think, rationalize, assess and evaluate. This has been recently studied as a basis for understanding and treating mental illnesses.<\/p>\n
This concept is extensively used in the field of educational psychology as it places high emphasis on learning. This process is a multifaceted concept and there are three different kinds of metacognition.<\/p>\n
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- Metacognitive Knowledge<\/li>\n
- Metacognitive Experiences<\/li>\n
- Metacognitive Control Strategies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
1. Metacognitive Knowledge:<\/h4>\n
This refers to the beliefs about one’s cognition. It is what individuals know about themselves and their internal thought processes. This can be explicit and implicit.<\/p>\n
Explicit metacognitive knowledge occurs at a conscious level, and it can be verbally expressed. Implicit metacognitive knowledge is not as apparent, but they work indirectly in many cognitive processes such as memory, heuristics (mental shortcuts to reach immediate conclusions) and biases in making judgments.<\/p>\n
Flavell went on to further divide metacognitive knowledge<\/a> into three different types.<\/p>\n
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- Person Variables:<\/strong> This involves the individual knowledge and beliefs about oneself as a learner and of others. For example, one may become aware of his social awkwardness in comparison to his friend who is considered more of a crowd pleaser.<\/li>\n
- Task Variables:<\/strong> This comprises all the knowledge that a person possesses about a proposed task. This knowledge acts as a form of guidance in managing the task and in predicting the success of the task. For example, the awareness about how well a person drives a car. This knowledge would help in deciding whether the person can take a long or short journey individually.<\/li>\n
- Strategy Variables:<\/strong> The strategy aspect of metacognitive knowledge involves identifying goals and sub-goals and ascertaining strategies and methods to achieve those set goals. For example, to gain knowledge about becoming a dermatologist and finding out ways to pursue the desired target.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
2. Metacognitive Experiences:<\/h4>\n
Metacognitive experiences are interpretations of cognitive experiences. It is to give a label to the internal psychological processes.<\/p>\n
For example, when a person experiences the sensation of dullness, irritability and lack of motivation, they conclude and label their momentary feeling as sadness.<\/p>\n
3. Metacognitive Control Strategies:<\/h4>\n
These are strategies people employ to control their cognitive systems. These strategies can be used to suppress or intensify thinking strategies. There are five thought control strategies such as reappraisal, punishment, social control, worry and distraction. Children are usually poor at this. However, as they grow, they learn to strategize and manage cognitions.<\/p>\n
There are various skills required for metacognitive regulation to occur. It involves skills such as identifying one’s learning styles, planning tasks, evaluating decisions and ideas, predicting the success rate of tasks, recognizing personal mistakes and executing methods to eradicate those mistakes, evaluating progress etc.<\/p>\n
Categories Of Metacognition<\/h4>\n
To wholly understand its broad functioning, Michael E Martinez identified three important categories of metacognition and they are:<\/p>\n
1. Metamemory And Meta Comprehension:<\/h4>\n
Metamemory refers to the awareness about one’s knowledge base and memory. For example, to be able to recognize that one’s memory is poor in terms of mathematical concepts is metamemory.<\/p>\n
Meta comprehension is the awareness or realization of one’s capacity to comprehend. A person may read a passage and not realize that they don’t understand because they read just the words and sentences and not the message of the passage.<\/p>\n
2. Problem-Solving:<\/h4>\n
One of the most complex processes that require high cognitive abilities is problem-solving<\/a>. Although it may sound like rocket science, we all solve problems on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n
Managing time, handling deadlines, finding something to wear, and filling our hungry stomachs are all problems we solve like a piece of cake. This seemingly complex process demands metacognition as we are analyzing our thoughts and evaluating our choices consistently to reach an ideal solution.<\/p>\n
3. Critical Thinking:<\/h4>\n
- Task Variables:<\/strong> This comprises all the knowledge that a person possesses about a proposed task. This knowledge acts as a form of guidance in managing the task and in predicting the success of the task. For example, the awareness about how well a person drives a car. This knowledge would help in deciding whether the person can take a long or short journey individually.<\/li>\n
- Person Variables:<\/strong> This involves the individual knowledge and beliefs about oneself as a learner and of others. For example, one may become aware of his social awkwardness in comparison to his friend who is considered more of a crowd pleaser.<\/li>\n