MetacognitionNeil H. Schwartz

Psych 605

Three Terms: Organizing the Concept

Metacognition Self-Regulation Self-regulated Learning

BanduraFlavell

ExogenousConstructivism

EndogenousConstructivism

SpencePiaget

DialecticalConstructivism

Conceptual Anchoring• Endogenous Constructivism

o Reflective abstraction of new or existing cognitive structures.o Inside the heado Emphasizes learner development instead of learner-environment

interactions• Exogenous Constructivism

o Interaction of the person with their environment.o Outside the heado Emphasizes reciprocal determinism of the environment on the person–

mediated through behavior.o Involves evaluations of performance, personal standards, valuations of

activities, and attributions.• Dialectical Constructivsm

o Combines Endogenous and Exogenous constructivismo Inside and outside the head.o Both Endo and Exo features exist in a relation of reciprocal constraint and

facilitation.o Endo and Exo are NOT mutually exclusive.

Metacognition

Metacognition

Flavell

Self-regulatory Mechanisms

or Metacognitive Control Processes

Knowledge of Cognition

Cognitive monitoringAwareness of Comprehension

Monitoring of task performanceduring the process of performing

Checking the OutcomePlanning

Monitoring EffectivenessTesting

RevisingEvaluating Strategies

Monitoring Control

Others

Inside the Head

Self Regulated Learning: Winne & Hadwin

• Learning occurs in 4 phaseso Defining taskso Setting goals and making planso Using tactics to studyo Making adaptations to metacognition

• Each phase is completed in terms of:o Conditionso Operationso Productso Evaluationso Standards

C O P E S

Conditions: Of the Task

• Beliefs and dispositions• Factors of motivation• Knowledge of the domain• Knowledge of the task• Knowledge of tactics and strategies

• Resources• Instructional cues• Time• Social Context

Conditions: Of the Learner

Operations

• Criteria that a student believes is the end state of a learning phase.

• Allows the student to know when a learning phase is over or complete.

The actual processes used to manipulate information.

They include searching, monitoring, assembling, rehearsing, translating, etc.

They are not metacognitive, but rather cognitive. They result in cognitive products; that is,

information for a particular stage.

Standards

Products

• These are cognitive evaluations of the fit between the standards and the products.

• Evaluations are metacognitive and iterative• They manifest differently in each phase.

What a student produces from the recursive interaction of Standards, Operations, & Evaluations

Different products are produced in each of the four phases.

Products are the things that a student takes with him from the task– e. g. understanding Winne’s model..

Evaluations

Conscious vs. Automatic Processes

• Metacognition is a higher order agent overlooking and governing cognition

• Metacognition draws on cognition• Metacognitive knowledge is based on domain-specific

knowledge.• Metacognition is typically private and unavailable to an observer.

Metacognition and Cognition

Most metacognitive processes are automatic. They become conscious when an error occurs. When they are first learned or deployed, they

are intentional and typically conscious.

Developmental Processes

• The jury is still out on whether metacognitive skills are domain general or specific.

Domain General vs. Specific

Metacognition is related to theory of mind and intelligence.

But, intelligence and metacognition are not the same thing.

Metacognition develops first in separate domains and later becomes generalized across domains.

Metacognition: A Simple View

Metacognition: A Neuroscience View

Interdependent top-down function of cognitive control

Prefrontal Cortex: Cortical Monitoring & Control

• Cognitive control is a top-down function for each of the integral working memory functions, monitored and controlled by the prefrontal cortex.

• The prefrontal cortex implements three interdependent functions of cognitive control—

Prefrontal Cortex: Cortical Monitoring & Control

o Maintenance: • Is the process of holding, in an active form, a limited amount of task-

relevant information supplied by a preceding event.• Appears to be the result of neurological patterns of activation borne from

specific external inputs oscillating in a recurrent loop between multiple networks of prefrontal and other cortical cells in regions of the brain that are specialized for the nature of the input (Ranganath, 2006).

o Attentional Control: • Is the top-down selective activation of the representations of task-relevant

stimuli and their corresponding responses;.• Appears to operate in a biasing and competitive fashion where neuronal

responses of the prefrontal cortex bias neuronal responses in posterior parts of the brain, creating a competition of activation and suppression for the task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimuli, respectively, required for task performance (Miller & Cohen, 2001).

o Integration: • Is the combination and reorganization of information from different sources

in the service of controlling the execution of a task. • Appears to be a hierarchically arranged deployment of control, cascading

down from super-ordinate prefrontal cortical modules specialized for large-scale integration, to subordinate modules that are relatively specialized for processing simple tasks. (Koechlin, Ody & Kouneiher, 2003).

Prefrontal Cortex & Cortical Control

o There appear to be a least two types of these top-down signals—one that serves to enhance, and another that serves to suppress, task-relevant information (D’Esposito,2007).

o These types of signals are important because enhancement and suppression mechanisms may actually exist to control both cognitive and metacognitive functions (Knight et al. 199; Shimamura, 2000).• It is well documented that excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms

are pervasively interleaved throughout the nervous system, in spinal reflexes, cerebellar outputs, and basal ganglia movement control networks, etc.—indeed, at multiple levels throughout the entire neuroaxis.

• That means “by generating contrast via both enhancements and suppressions… top-down signals bias the likelihood of successful representation of relevant information in a competitive system” (D’Esposito, 2006, p.768).

o In short, the top-down function and the biasing effect within the context of a competitive system could be a compelling way to think about a neurological explanation of metacognitive monitoring and control.

Metacognition: A Neuroscience View

Metacognitive monitoring and control: A closed neurocognitive loop