The Developmental Origin of Metacognition

Metacognition traditionally has been conceptualized as a form of higher-order thought that requires metarepresentation, logical reasoning, self-consciousness, and introspective access to knowledge states. Thinking of metacognition along these lines precludes metacognition in nonhuman animals, preverbal human infants, and subjects with certain cognitive and neurophysiological impairments. Recent experimental evidence of implicit metacognitive skills in nonhuman primates, human infants, and human adults show the need for a broad concept of metacognition, based in what metacognition does, i.e., its operative function, instead of theoretical hypotheses about what it is, i.e., its nature. Such a concept would permit unbiased cross-disciplinary investigations of the evolution and development of metacognition. Presenting a new theoretical and conceptual framework for investigating implicit and perceptual forms of metacognition, the article explores the claim that metacognition has its developmental origin in primary intersubjectivity. The claim has implications for research on metacognition in comparative psychology, cognitive science, and related disciplines. It is argued that basic metacognitive skills start to develop from 2 months of age in episodes of turn-taking between infant and caregiver. Infants initially acquire the means for joint monitoring and control of the interaction with the caregiver. Later metacognitive development is a function of the quality and quantity of the stimulation during this period. Turn-taking is apt for scaffolding metacognitive growth because, first, monitoring and control of cognition is integral to it, second, it enables learning and training of epistemic actions that realize monitoring and control functions, and third, feedback is immediate.

Brinck and Liljenfors's (B&L's) account of metacognition emphasizes the social roots of this ability which has, thus far, been regarded as purely cognitive and metarepresentational. However, confusions in the concept of such social metacognition as parallel to the concept of social cognition make it difficult to assess the useability of this approach. We suggest an integration of metacognition with the concept of early social cognition to resolve some of these confusions.

Infant and Child Development 22(1): 111–117 (2013), 2013

In our response, we address four themes arising from the commentaries. First, we discuss the distinction between cognition and metacognition and show how to draw it within our framework. Next, we explain how metacognition differs from social cognition. The underlying mechanisms of metacognitive development are then elucidated in terms of interaction patterns. Finally, we consider measures of metacognition and suitable methods for investigating it.

2019

This metacognitive ability of young children is of great interest because of its relation to children's ability to notice and reflect on their own mental states. Since Piaget's early work, young children have been considered as having little or no awareness of their mental activity. Traditionally, there was a belief of a general lack of introspective awareness and that preschoolers show little understanding of cognitive cueing (Gordon and Flavell, 1977). More recent research, however, (Louca-Papaleontiou, Melhuish and Philaretou, 2012; Gonzales, 2015) support the idea thatin contrast to previous theories-preschool children do possess metacognitive awareness and the ability of introspection. This paper tries to review most of the main studies on children's metacognitive awareness (i.e. introspection) and to explain any inconsistencies in their findings.

New Ideas in Psychology, 2019

This metacognitive ability of young children is of great interest because of its relation to children's ability to notice and reflect on their own mental states. Since Piaget's early work, young children have been considered as having little or no awareness of their mental activity. Traditionally, there was a belief of a general lack of introspective awareness and that preschoolers show little understanding of cognitive cueing (Gordon and Flavell, 1977). More recent research, however, (Louca-Papaleontiou, Melhuish and Philaretou, 2012; Gonzales, 2015) support the idea thatin contrast to previous theories-preschool children do possess metacognitive awareness and the ability of introspection. This paper tries to review most of the main studies on children's metacognitive awareness (i.e. introspection) and to explain any inconsistencies in their findings.

2006

Many core cognitive processes, such as associative learning, are thought to appear early in infancy and develop rapidly throughout childhood, while more complex processes such as metacognition are thought to appear significantly later. However, there is an apparent paradox in that the rapid growth in cognitive development cannot be explained by passive learning mechanisms only, yet for children to actively guide their own learning, they must be at least somewhat self-referential. In the experiments reported here, metacognition was assessed using non-verbal tasks originally developed for non-human animals. Children aged 3.5 were able to demonstrate metacognition by strategically responding on a task in which they had to access their knowledge states. In addition, results indicate that children whose metacognitive assessments more closely matched their actual memory performance also showed superior overall learning compared to children whose metacognitive assessments were less accurat...

Current directions in psychological science, 2000

Standing of the mind has been valuable in highlighting the earliest forms of metacognition. By age 3, children have acquired some awareness of themselves and oth ers as knowers. They distinguish thinking about an object from actu ally perceiving it, and begin to re fer to their own knowledge states, using verbs such as think and know (Flavell, 1999). By age 4, they un derstand that others' behavior is guided by beliefs and desires and that such beliefs may not match their own and could be incorrect. This so-called false belief under standing is a developmental mile stone because it connects assertions to their generative source in hu man knowers. These early years are also a period of rapidly devel oping awareness of how one has come to know that what one claims is so?that is, awareness of the sources of one's knowledge. knowledge is thereby acquired, in a highly deliberate, rule-governed, and therefore metacognitively con trolled process.

Evolutionary Linguistic Theory, 2023

While the term "metacognition" is sometimes used to refer to any form of thinking about thinking, in cognitive psychology, it is typically reserved for thinking about one's own thinking, as opposed to thinking about others' thinking. How metacognition in this more specific sense relates to otherdirected mindreading is one of the main theoretical issues debated in the literature. This article considers the idea that we make use of the same or a largely similar package of resources in conceptually interpreting our own mind as we do in interpreting others'. I assume that a capacity for other-directed mindreading is minimally shared with our great-ape relatives, but I argue that the architecture of this system had to be substantially modified before it could efficiently and adaptively be turned inwards on one's own mind. I contend that an important piece of the overall evolutionary explanation here likely concerns selection pressures arising from the domain of conversational interaction. Specifically, drawing on work carried out in the human interaction studies tradition (e.g., conversation analysis), I argue that the smooth to-and-fro of conversational interaction can be seen to heavily depend on metacommunicative capacities, which, in turn, are underpinned by metacognitive capacities. I conclude with a thumbnail sketch of an evolutionary account of the emergence of these metacognitive capacities in the human line. Their appearance and spread-whether via genes, cultural learning, or more likely, some combination of the two-helps to explain the transition from great-ape communication to human conversation.

Developmental Science, 2019

Children frequently learn from those around them as they explore and interact with their social world. Through observing and imitating others, children acquire many learned skills that would otherwise be difficult-if not, impossible-to develop on their own. As such, socially learned behavior (e.g. tool use, language and cultural norms) is a critical feature of child development (Wood et al., 2016). However, social information can be outdated and inappropriate. Children must be able to filter among potential informants and keep track of those who can offer accurate information in order to successfully learn from those around them. A plethora of research has demonstrated that children actively engage in social learning strategies that enable them to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources of information, and then display selective trust in one source over another (Koenig & Harris, 2005;

https://edict.ro/, 2023