Lecture
Metacognitive processes (from Ancient Greek μετα-, μετά and Latin cognitiō — "knowledge"; metacognition) — "knowledge about knowledge", "thinking about thinking", "awareness of awareness", and so on.
Metacognition is awareness of one's own thought processes and an understanding of the patterns underlying them. The term derives from the root word " meta" , meaning "beyond" or "above". Metacognition can take various forms, such as reflecting on one's own way of thinking and knowing when and how to use particular strategies for problem solving. There are usually two components of metacognition: (1) knowledge about cognition and (2) regulation of cognition.
Metamemory, defined as knowledge about memory and mnemonic strategies, is an especially important form of metacognition. Academic research on metacognitive processing across cultures is at an initial stage, but there are indications that further work may yield better outcomes in cross-cultural learning between teachers and students.
Work on metacognition dates back at least to two works by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC): " On the Soul" and " Parva Naturalia" .
The concept of metacognition was introduced by John Flavell in 1976, who defined it as the totality of a person's knowledge about the basic characteristics of the cognitive domain and the ways of controlling it. J. Flavell identified four components of metacognition: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experience, goals and strategies.
A. Brown (A. L. Brown) defines metacognition as knowledge about one's own knowledge. She divided metacognition into two broad categories:
A. Brown also points out that metacognitive processes make it possible to regulate and control the learning process and consist of a number of processes:
R. Kluwe, in turn, identifies within the structure of metacognition two processes that carry out the control and regulation of cognitive processes:
In their work, D. Wrigley, P. Schutz, R. Glantz and C. Weinstein define metacognition as the process of using reflection to consciously examine one's thinking, being aware of one's own strategies of mental activity. They include planning, the selection of activity strategies, and the monitoring of cognitive activity.
S. Tobias and H. T. Everson proposed a hierarchical model of metacognitive abilities: knowledge monitoring, evaluation of learning, strategy selection and planning. Moreover, they define knowledge monitoring as a person's ability to know what he knows and what he does not know; knowledge monitoring is a prerequisite for other metacognitive skills.
Fig. Flavell's model of metacognition.
Fig. Brown's model of metacognition.
Fig. model of metacognition, the hierarchical model of Tobias and Everson.
M. A. Kholodnaya, like a number of other authors, holds to the idea that metacognition is not limited to conscious control. Investigating the problem of the organization of the intellectual sphere (mental experience), M. A. Kholodnaya identifies three levels of experience:
Metacognition is subdivided into three components:
Metacognition refers to a level of thinking that involves active control over the thinking process used in learning situations. Planning an approach to a learning task, monitoring comprehension and evaluating progress on the task: these are skills that are metacognitive in nature.
When considering metacognitive knowledge, metacognition includes at least three different types of metacognitive knowledge:
Similarly to metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive regulation, or "regulation of cognition", comprises three important skills.
In the same way, maintaining the motivation to see a task through to the end is also a metacognitive skill. The ability to be aware of distracting stimuli — both internal and external — and to sustain effort over time also involves metacognitive or executive functions. The theory that metacognition plays a decisive role in successful learning means that it is important for both students and teachers to demonstrate it.
Students who have undergone metacognitive training, including pre-testing, self-assessment and the drawing up of study plans, performed better on examinations. These are self-regulated learners who use "the right tool for the job" and change their learning strategies and skills on the basis of their understanding of effectiveness. Individuals with a high level of metacognitive knowledge and skills identify obstacles to learning as early as possible and change "tools" or strategies to ensure that the goal is achieved. Swanson (1990) found that metacognitive knowledge can compensate for IQ and a lack of prior knowledge when comparing the problem solving of fifth- and sixth-grade students. Students with high metacognition were reported to use fewer strategies but to solve problems more effectively than students with low metacognition, regardless of IQ or prior knowledge. [20]In one study examining students who send text messages during college lectures, it was suggested that students with higher metacognitive abilities were less likely than other students to be adversely affected by mobile phone use in class.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
- Bertrand Russell
Metacognitivists are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, the nature of the task set and the "tools" or skills available. A broader repertoire of "tools" also helps in achieving the goal. When the "tools" are general, universal and context-independent, they are more likely to be useful in various types of learning situations.
Another distinction within metacognition is executive management and strategic knowledge. Executive management processes involve planning, monitoring, evaluating and revising one's own thought processes and products. Strategic knowledge involves knowing what (factual or declarative knowledge), knowing when and why (conditional or contextual knowledge) and knowing how (procedural or methodological knowledge). Both executive management and metacognition of strategic knowledge are necessary for self-regulating one's own thinking and learning.
Finally, there is no distinction between metacognitive skills that are general and those that are domain-specific. This means that metacognitive skills are general in nature, and there are no specific skills for particular subject domains. The metacognitive skills used in reviewing an essay are the same as those used to check the answer to a mathematics question.
Although metacognition has so far been discussed in relation to the self, recent research in this area has shown that this view is overly restrictive. On the contrary, it is argued that research on metacognition should also include beliefs about the mental processes of others, about the influence of culture on these beliefs, and about beliefs concerning the self. This "expansionist view" suggests that it is impossible to fully understand metacognition without taking into account the situational norms and cultural expectations that influence these very concepts. This combination of social psychology and metacognition is called social metacognition.
Social metacognition may include ideas and perceptions relating to social cognition. In addition, social metacognition may include the appraisal of others' cognition, for example appraising others' perceptions and emotional states. [24] This is partly because the process of judging others is similar to judging oneself. [24] However, people have less information about the people they are judging; therefore judgements about others tend to be more inaccurate. Such cognitions can serve as a safeguard against this inaccuracy and can be useful for teams or organizations, as well as in interpersonal relationships.
An example of the interaction between social metacognition and self-concept can be found in the study of implicit theories about the self. Implicit theories can encompass a wide range of constructs about how the "self" operates, but two of them are particularly relevant here: entity theory and incremental theory. [27]Entity theory assumes that a person's self-attributes and abilities are fixed and stable, whereas incremental theory assumes that these same constructs can be changed through effort and experience. Entity theorists are susceptible to learned helplessness because they may feel that circumstances are beyond their control (i.e. there is nothing that can be done to improve the situation), and so they may give up easily. Incremental theorists respond differently when they encounter failure: they want to cope with difficulties and therefore adhere to a mastery-oriented pattern. They immediately began to consider the different ways in which they could approach the task differently, and increased their effort. Cultural beliefs can also influence this. For example, in the same way, a woman who is aware of the stereotype that women are not very good at mathematics may perform worse on tests of mathematical ability or avoid mathematics altogether. These examples demonstrate that people's metacognitive beliefs about themselves — which may be transmitted socially or culturally — can have an important influence on persistence, performance and motivation.
The way people think about an attitude strongly influences their behaviour. Metacognitions about attitudes influence how people act, and especially how they interact with others.
Some metacognitive characteristics of an attitude include importance, certainty and perceived knowledge, and these influence behaviour in different ways. Attitude importance is the strongest predictor of behaviour and can predict information-seeking behaviour in people. Attitude importance is also more likely to influence behaviour than attitude certainty. [30]When considering social behaviour such as voting, a person may attach great importance to it but have low certainty. This means they are likely to vote even if they are not sure whom to vote for. Meanwhile, a person who is very certain about whom they want to vote for may not vote if it is not of great importance to them. This also applies to interpersonal relationships. A person may have a great deal of positive knowledge about their family, but they may not maintain close relations with their family if it is not of great importance to them.
The metacognitive characteristics of attitudes may be the key to understanding how attitudes change. Research shows that the frequency of positive or negative thoughts is the greatest factor in attitude change. A person may believe that climate change is happening but have negative thoughts about it, such as: "If I take responsibility for climate change, I will have to change my way of life." Such people are unlikely to change their behaviour compared with those who have positive thoughts about the same issue, such as: "By using less electricity, I will help the planet."
Another way to increase the likelihood of behaviour change is to influence the source of the attitude. A person's own thoughts and ideas have a much greater influence on attitude than the ideas of others. [31] Therefore, when people believe that changes in lifestyle come from themselves, the effects are stronger than if the changes came from a friend or family member. These thoughts can be reframed so as to emphasize personal importance, for example: "I want to quit smoking because it is important to me", rather than "quitting smoking is important for my family". Further research is needed on cultural differences and the importance of group ideology, which may alter these findings.
People have secondary beliefs about the appropriateness, justifiability and social permissibility of their own stereotypical beliefs. People know that it is generally unacceptable to make stereotypical judgements and consciously try not to do so. Subtle social cues can affect these conscious efforts. For example, having been given a false sense of confidence in their ability to judge others, people will revert to relying on social stereotypes. Cultural background influences social metacognitive assumptions, including stereotypes. For example, in cultures without the stereotype that memory declines with age, no age differences in memory performance are observed.
When it comes to judgements about other people, implicit theories about the stability and malleability of human characteristics also predict differences in social stereotyping. Adherence to an entity theory of traits increases people's tendency to see similarity between group members and to use stereotypical judgements. For example, compared with those who hold incremental beliefs, people who hold entity beliefs about traits use more stereotypical judgements about the traits of ethnic and occupational groups, and also form more extreme trait judgements about novel groups. [34] When individual assumptions about a group are combined with their implicit theories, more stereotypical judgements may be formed. Stereotypes that one believes others hold about them are called metastereotypes.
Beran, Smith and Perdue (2013) found that chimpanzees display metacognitive monitoring in information seeking. In their studies, three language-trained chimpanzees were asked to use a keyboard to name a food item in order to obtain it. The food in the container was either visible to them, or they had to approach the container to see its contents. The studies showed that the chimpanzees were more likely to check first what was in the container if the food in the container was hidden. But when the food was visible to them, the chimpanzees were more likely to go to the keyboard and report what the food was without looking into the container again. Their results showed that chimpanzees know what they have seen and display efficient information-seeking behaviour when information is incomplete.
Morgan et al. (2014) investigated whether rhesus macaques can make both retrospective and prospective metacognitive judgements on the same memory task. Risk options were presented in order to assess the monkey's confidence in its memories. Two male rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta) were first trained on a computerized token-economy task in which they could accumulate tokens to exchange for food rewards. The monkeys were simultaneously presented with several images of common objects, after which a moving border appeared on the screen indicating the target. Immediately after the presentation, the target images and some distractors were shown in the test. During the training phase, the monkeys received immediate feedback after making their responses. They could earn two tokens if they made the correct choice, but lost two tokens if they were wrong.
In Experiment 1, a confidence rating was introduced after they had completed their responses, in order to test retrospective metamemory judgments. After each response, the monkeys were offered a choice between a high-risk and a low-risk option. They could earn one token regardless of their accuracy if they chose the low-risk option. When they chose high risk, they were rewarded with three tokens if their memory response was correct on that trial, but lost three tokens if they gave incorrect answers. Morgan and colleagues (2014) found a significant positive correlation between memory accuracy and risk choice in two rhesus macaques. That is, they were more likely to choose the high-risk option if they had responded correctly on the working memory task, but chose the low-risk option if they had failed the memory task.
Morgan et al. (2014) then examined the monkeys' prospective metacognitive monitoring skills in Experiment 2. This study used the same design, except that the two monkeys were asked to make a low- or high-risk confidence judgment before giving their actual responses, in order to measure their judgments about future events. Likewise, the monkeys more often chose the high-risk option before responding correctly on the working memory task, and tended to choose the low-risk option before giving an incorrect response. These two studies showed that rhesus macaques can accurately monitor their own performance, and provided evidence of metacognitive abilities in monkeys.
In addition to non-human primates, metacognition is also found in other animals. Foote and Crystal (2007) provided the first evidence that rats know what they know, in a perceptual discrimination task. [38]The rats had to classify brief sounds as short or long. Some noises of intermediate duration were difficult to discriminate as short or long. The rats were given the opportunity to decline the test on some trials, but were forced to give a response on other trials. If they chose to take the test and answered correctly, they received a high reward, but received no reward if their classification of the noise was incorrect. But if the rats declined to take the test, they were guaranteed a smaller reward. The results showed that the rats were more likely to decline the test as the difficulty of noise discrimination increased, suggesting that the rats knew they did not have the correct answers and declined the test in order to secure a reward.
These responses can be attributed to active monitoring of one's own mental state. Alternatively, external cues, such as associations with environmental signals, could be used to explain their behavior in the discrimination task. The rats could have learned the association between the intermediate stimuli and the decline option over time. Longer response latencies or certain features inherent in the stimuli could serve as distinctive cues for declining tests. Accordingly, Templer, Lee, and Preston (2017) used an olfactory delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) memory task to assess whether rats are capable of responding metacognitively in an adaptive manner. [39]The rats were first exposed to a sample odor and, after some delay, chose either to decline or to take a four-alternative memory test. The correct odor choice was associated with a high reward, and an incorrect choice with no reward. Decline options were accompanied by a small reward.
In Experiment 2, some "no-sample" trials, in which no odor was presented before the test, were added to the memory test. They predicted that the rats would decline more often when no sample odor was presented, compared with when an odor was presented, if the rats could internally assess memory strength. Alternatively, if the decline option were motivated by external environmental cues, the rats would be less likely to decline the test, because no available external cues were presented. The results showed that the rats were more likely to decline the test on no-sample trials compared with ordinary trials, supporting the idea that rats can monitor the strength of their internal memory.
To rule out other potential possibilities, they also manipulated memory strength by presenting the sample odor twice and by varying the retention interval between training and test. Templer and colleagues (2017) found that the rats were less likely to decline the test if they had been exposed to the sample twice, suggesting that their memory strength for these samples had been increased. A test with a longer sample delay was declined more often than a test with a short delay, because their memory was better after a brief delay. Overall, their series of studies demonstrated that rats can distinguish between remembering and forgetting, and ruled out the possibility that declining is modulated by external cues such as associations with environmental signals.
Research on metacognition in pigeons has shown limited success. Inman and Shettleworth (1999) used a delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) procedure to test metacognition in pigeons. [40]Pigeons were presented with one of three sample shapes (a triangle, a square, or a star), and then had to peck the matching sample when three stimuli appeared simultaneously on the screen at the end of the retention interval. A safe key was also presented on some trials alongside the three sample stimuli, allowing them to decline that trial. Pigeons received a high reward for pecking the correct stimuli, a mid-level reward for pecking the safe key, and nothing if they pecked the incorrect stimuli. Inman and Shettleworth's (1999) first experiment showed that the pigeons' accuracy was lower and that they were more likely to choose the safe key as the retention interval between stimulus presentation and test increased. However, in Experiment 2, when the pigeons were given the opportunity to escape or to take the test before the testing phase, there was no relationship between choosing the safe key and a longer retention interval. Adams and Santi (2011) also used a DMTS procedure in a perceptual discrimination task, during which pigeons were trained to discriminate the duration of illumination.[41] The pigeons were no more likely to choose the escape option as the retention interval increased during initial testing. After extended training, they learned to avoid difficult trials. However, these patterns may be related to the possibility that the pigeons learned the association between escape responses and longer retention delays.
In addition to the DMTS paradigm, Castro and Wasserman (2013) demonstrated that pigeons can display adaptive and efficient information-seeking behavior when performing the same discrimination task. [43]Two sets of items were presented simultaneously, in which the two sets of items were either identical to or different from each other. The pigeons were required to discriminate between the two sets of items at varying levels of difficulty. The pigeons were provided with an "Information" button and a "Go" button on some trials, so that they could increase the number of elements in the arrays to make discrimination easier, or they could opt to respond by pressing the "Go" button. Castro and Wasserman found that the more difficult the task, the more often the pigeons chose the information button to solve the discrimination task. This behavioral pattern showed that pigeons can internally assess task difficulty and actively seek information when necessary.
Dogs have demonstrated a certain level of metacognition, in that they are sensitive to information they have or have not obtained. Belger & Bräuer (2018) investigated whether dogs seek additional information in uncertain situations. [44] The experimenter placed a reward behind one of two fences, in a setup where the dogs could either see or not see where the reward was hidden. After this, the dogs were asked to find the reward by going around one fence. The dogs checked more often before choosing a fence when they had not seen the baiting process, compared with when they had seen where the reward was hidden. However, unlike apes, [45]dogs did not show more checking behavior when the delay between the baiting of the reward and the choice of fence was longer. Their results showed that dogs possess some aspects of information-seeking behavior, but these are less flexible compared with apes.
Smith et al. (1995) assessed whether dolphins possess the capacity for metacognitive monitoring in an auditory threshold paradigm. [46] A bottlenose dolphin was trained to discriminate between high-frequency and low-frequency tones. On some trials, an escape option associated with a small reward was available. Their studies showed that the dolphin could appropriately use the uncertainty response when the trials were difficult to discriminate.
There is a consensus that non-human primates, especially great apes and rhesus macaques, exhibit metacognitive control and monitoring behavior. But less consistent evidence has been found in other animals, such as rats and pigeons. [48] Some researchers have criticized these methods and argued that these performances may be explained by low-level conditioning mechanisms. [49] The animals learned the association between reward and external stimuli through simple reinforcement models. However, many studies have shown that a reinforcement model alone cannot explain animals' behavioral patterns. Animals display adaptive metacognitive behavior even in the absence of a specific reward.
Metacognitive processes are especially prevalent when it comes to self-regulated learning. Self-regulation requires metacognition, by looking at awareness of one's own learning and planning further learning methodology. [52] Mindful metacognition is a hallmark of good self-regulated learners, but it does not guarantee automatic application. Enhancing collective discussion of metacognition is a hallmark of self-critical and self-regulating social groups. Activities of strategy selection and application include those involving the ongoing attempt to plan, check, monitor, select, revise, evaluate, and so on.
Metacognition is "stable" in the sense that learners' initial decisions are based on pertinent facts about their cognition over years of learning. At the same time, it is also "situated" in the sense that it depends on learners' familiarity with the task, motivation, emotion, and so on. People need to regulate their thoughts about the strategy they are using and adjust it depending on the situation to which the strategy is being applied. At the professional level, this has led to an emphasis on developing reflective practice, particularly in education and healthcare.
More recently, this notion has been applied to the study of second language learners in the field of TESOL and applied linguistics more generally (e.g., Wenden, 1987; Zhang, 2001, 2010). This new development owes much to Flavell (1979), where the notion of metacognition is elaborated within a tripartite theoretical framework. Learners' metacognition is defined and investigated by examining their person knowledge, task knowledge, and strategic knowledge.
Wenden (1991) proposed and used this framework, and Zhang (2001) adopted this approach and investigated the metacognition, or metacognitive knowledge, of second language learners. In addition to studying the relationships between metacognition and learner performance, researchers are also interested in the effects of metacognitively oriented strategic instruction on reading comprehension (e.g., Garner, 1994, in a first-language context, and Chamot, 2005; Zhang, 2010). Efforts are directed at developing learner autonomy, interdependence, and self-regulation.
Metacognition helps people perform many cognitive tasks more effectively. Strategies for promoting metacognition include self-questioning (e.g., "What do I already know about this topic? How have I solved similar problems before?"), thinking aloud while performing a task, and creating graphic representations (e.g., concept maps, flow charts, semantic networks) of one's thoughts and knowledge. Carr, 2002, argues that the physical act of writing plays a large role in developing metacognitive skills.
Strategy evaluation matrices (SEM) can help improve knowledge of cognition component of metacognition. The SEM works by identifying declarative (column 1), procedural (column 2), and conditional (columns 3 and 4) knowledge about specific strategies. The SEM can help people identify the strengths and weaknesses of particular strategies, as well as introduce them to new strategies they can add to their repertoire.
Regulatory checklists (RC) are a useful strategy for improving the regulation-of-cognition aspect of metacognition. RCs help people implement a sequence of thoughts that allows them to work through their own metacognition. [55] King (1991) found that fifth-grade students who used a regulatory checklist outperformed control-group students when looking at a range of questions, including written problem solving, asking strategic questions, and elaborating on information.
Examples of strategies that can be taught to students are word-analysis skills, active reading strategies, listening skills, organizational skills, and creating mnemonic devices.
Walker and Walker have developed a model of metacognition in school learning termed steered cognition, which describes the capacity of the mind to exert conscious control over its reasoning and processing strategies in relation to an external learning task. Studies have shown that students capable of exerting metacognitive regulation over their attentional and reasoning strategies used when studying mathematics, and then shifting those strategies when engaging with science or English literature study, are associated with higher academic outcomes at secondary school.
"Metastrategic knowledge" (MSK) is a sub-component of metacognition that is defined as general knowledge about higher-order thinking strategies. MSK has been defined as "general knowledge about the cognitive procedures that are being manipulated". The knowledge involved in MSK consists of "making generalizations and drawing rules regarding a thinking strategy" and of "naming" the thinking strategy.
The important conscious act of a metastrategic strategy is the "conscious" awareness that one is performing a form of higher-order thinking. MSK is an awareness of the types of thinking strategies being used in specific instances, and it consists of the following abilities: making generalizations and drawing rules regarding a thinking strategy, naming the thinking strategy, explaining when, why, and how such a thinking strategy should be used, when it should not be used, what the disadvantages are of not using appropriate strategies, and what task characteristics call for the use of the strategy.
MSK addresses the broader picture of the conceptual problem. It creates rules to describe and understand the physical world around the people who utilize these processes, called higher-order thinking. This is a person's ability to break down complex problems in order to understand the components of the problem. These are the building blocks for understanding the "big picture" (the main problem) through reflection and problem solving.
According to recent research, both the social and cognitive dimensions of sporting expertise can be adequately explained from a metacognitive perspective. The potential of metacognitive inferences and general domain skills, including psychological skills training, is integral to the genesis of expert performance. Furthermore, the contribution of both mental imagery (e.g., mental practice) and attentional strategies (e.g., routines) to our understanding of expertise and metacognition merits attention. [61] The potential of metacognition to illuminate our understanding of action was first highlighted by Aidan Moran, who discussed the role of meta-attention in 1996. [62] A recent research initiative, a series of research seminars called META, funded by the BPS, is exploring the role of the related constructs of meta-motivation, meta-emotion, thinking, and action (meta-cognition).
In the mental health context, metacognition can be broadly defined as the process that "reinforces one's subjective sense of self and makes it possible to recognize that some thoughts and feelings are symptoms of an illness". Interest in metacognition arose out of a concern with a person's ability to understand their own mental status relative to others, as well as the ability to cope with the source of their distress. These insightsinto a person's state of mental health can have an enormous impact on overall prognosis and recovery. Metacognition provides many unique insights into a person's normal everyday functioning. It also demonstrates that the absence of these insights compromises "normal" functioning. This leads to poorer health outcomes. In the autism spectrum, there is a profound deficit in theory of mind. Among people who identify as alcoholics, there is a belief that the need to control cognitive functions is an independent predictor of alcohol use over anxiety. Alcohol can be used as a coping strategy to control unwanted thoughts and emotions caused by negative perceptions. This is sometimes referred to as self-medication..
Adrian Wells and Gerald Matthews' theory proposes that, when faced with an unwanted choice, a person may operate in two distinct modes: "object" and "metacognitive". The object mode interprets perceived stimuli as truth, whereas the metacognitive mode understands thoughts as cues that must be weighed and evaluated. They are not so readily trusted. There exist targeted interventions unique to each patient, which gives reason to believe that helping to increase metacognition in people diagnosed with schizophrenia is possible through individualized psychotherapy. With individualized therapy available, clients have the potential to develop a greater capacity to engage in complex self-reflection. This may ultimately prove decisive for the patient's process of recovery. Inthe obsessive-compulsive spectrum, cognitive formulations give greater attention to the intrusive thoughts associated with the disorder. "Cognitive self-consciousness" is the tendency to focus attention on thought. Patients with OCD display varying degrees of these "intrusive thoughts". Patients also suffering from generalized anxiety disorder likewise display a negative thought process in their cognition.
The cognitive attentional syndrome (CAS) characterizes the metacognitive model of emotional disorder (CAS is consistent with an attentional strategy of excessively focusing on the source of threat). This ultimately develops through the client's own beliefs. Metacognitive therapy attempts to correct this shift in the CAS. One of the techniques in this model is called attention training (ATT). It was developed to reduce worry and anxiety through a sense of control and cognitive awareness. ATT also trains clients to detect threat and to test how manageable reality is.
The concept of metacognition has also been applied to reader-response criticism. Narrative works of art, including novels, films, and musical compositions, can be characterized as metacognitive artifacts created by the artist in order to anticipate and regulate the recipient's beliefs and cognitive processes , for example, how and in what order events and their causes and identities are revealed to the reader of a detective story. As Menakhem Perry has pointed out, mere order has a profound effect on the aesthetic meaning of a text. Narrative works of art contain a representation of their own ideal process of perception. They are a kind of instrument by means of which the creators of the work seek to achieve certain aesthetic and even moral effects.
There is an intimate, dynamic interplay between mind wandering and metacognition. Metacognition serves to correct the wandering mind, suppressing spontaneous thoughts and returning attention to more "worthwhile" tasks
Metcalfe and Shimamura note that in research on metacognition the central methodological problem is that of the objectivity and accuracy of metacognitive judgments, which is associated with a number of phenomena
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a bias in cognition consisting in the fact that people with a low level of skill draw erroneous conclusions, make poor decisions, and are at the same time unable to recognize their own mistakes because of their low level of skill. This leads them to form inflated notions of their own abilities, while genuinely highly skilled people, on the contrary, tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer from insufficient confidence in their own powers, considering others to be more competent. Thus, less competent people generally hold a higher opinion of their own abilities than competent people do, who moreover tend to assume that those around them rate their abilities just as low as they themselves do.
Although the principle itself was formulated in 1999, the authors note similar observations by philosophers and scientists:
Charles Darwin — "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
Bertrand Russell — "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision".
Lao Tzu ("He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know"),
Confucius ("True knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance"),
Socrates ("I know that I know nothing"),
The Apostle Paul: "And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know" (1 Corinthians 8:2)
Thoughts don't matter. What matters is how you respond to them.
Everyone has negative thoughts, and everyone believes them sometimes. But not everyone develops persistent anxiety, depression, or emotional suffering. An important question arises: what controls and determines whether these thoughts pass, or whether prolonged and intense distress develops?
This book offers an answer. We hold that metacognitions determine healthy and unhealthy types of control over our mind. Moreover, we hold that what matters is not only what a person thinks, but also how they think, and that it is this that shapes their emotions and their ability to control them.
Thinking can be compared to an orchestra with many musicians and instruments. For the desired overture, a score and a conductor are needed. Metacognition here is the score and the conductor that determine our thinking. Metacognition is cognition about cognition, thinking about thinking. It monitors, controls, and evaluates the outcomes and the process of awareness.
For most of us, emotional discomfort is transient, because we learn ways of coping flexibly with the negative ideas (for example, thoughts and beliefs) that our mind creates. The metacognitive approach is based on the idea that people become trapped in emotional distress because their metacognitions generate a particular pattern of responding to inner experience that maintains emotions and reinforces negative ideas. The pattern in question is called the Cognitive Attentional Syndrome (CAS), which consists of worry, rumination, fixed attention, and unhelpful self-regulatory strategies or coping (behavioral strategies for overcoming external and internal difficulties).
An example of this toxic pattern can be seen in the response of a recent patient of mine. I asked her: "What is the main thing you learned during metacognitive therapy for your depression?" She replied: "The problem really isn't that I have negative thoughts about myself; the problem is how I respond to them. I realized I was adding fuel to the fire. I simply hadn't noticed this process before." The patient discovered that her reactions to negative thoughts had inadvertently developed into an unhelpful thinking style that reinforced her negative view of herself. We will return to the question of the nature of this process later in this chapter.
Metacognitive therapy (MCT) is based on the principle that metacognition is vitally necessary for understanding how thinking works and how it creates the conscious experiences and the knowledge we have about ourselves and the world around us. Metacognition determines what we attend to and what reaches our consciousness. It also shapes appraisals and influences the types of strategies we use to regulate thoughts and feelings. The argument developed
and illustrated throughout this book holds that metacognition critically influences what we believe and what we think about, and that metacognition is the basis of normal and abnormal emotional and conscious experiences and thoughts.
The basic premise of traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), such as Beck's schema theory and Ellis's rational emotive behavior therapy, is that disturbances or distortions of thinking are the cause of psychological disorders. In both of these approaches, dysfunctional beliefs play a key role. MCT agrees with this view as a principal tenet, which makes MCT a variety of cognitive therapy. What distinguishes it from previous approaches is that MCT singles out a particular type of thinking and particular types of beliefs, whereas other theories do not treat them as significant causes of disorder. This type of thinking does not concern distortions such as absolutist standards (perfectionism) or black-and-white thinking. The type of thinking MCT is concerned with is the CAS, which is characterized by excessive verbal, elaborated, and perseverative deliberation in the form of worry and rumination (mental chewing-over). This is accompanied by specific attentional (that is, attention-related) biases, in which attention remains fixed on threat. The crucial beliefs in MCT are not the ordinary cognitions of CBT and REBT concerning the world and the social and physical aspects of the self, but beliefs concerning thinking (metacognitive beliefs).
The traditional CBT approach to psychological disorder holds that events in themselves are not the cause of psychological problems. The ways in which events are interpreted are the main factor leading to the development of disorder. CBT works with the meaning that people attach to their experiences. CBT holds that the problem lies in erroneous and distorted views of the self and the world. CBT is concerned with changing the content of these thoughts and the person's conviction in the correctness of that content. By contrast, MCT deals with how people think and proposes that the problem consists in inflexible and recurrent styles of thinking in response to negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. MCT focuses on getting rid of unhelpful styles of processing thoughts. MCT proposes that any problems with the content of cognitions arise exclusively at the metacognitive level. For example, if we consider the case of a depressed patient who is convinced that "I am worthless", the CBT therapist challenges the problematic belief with the question: "Is there any evidence?" By contrast, the MCT therapist asks: "What is the point of evaluating your worth?"
In both the CBT and the MCT approaches, the content of beliefs and thoughts determines the type of disorder they generate. Thoughts about danger heighten anxiety; thoughts about losses and self-devaluation heighten sadness. MCT postulates that this semantic content is not the cause of disorder, because most people have such thoughts, and for the majority emotions are transient. Emotional disorder is a problem because of being trapped in a state of distress. It is chronic or recurrent. Emotional disorder is generated by metacognitions that give rise to types of thinking that lock the person into a prolonged and recurrent state of a negative style of processing thoughts about the self. In essence, MCT focuses on the factors that lead to perseverative thinking and maladaptive coping.
In CBT, the erroneous interpretations of events that generate psychological disorders are held to derive from beliefs, but these beliefs belong to the ordinary cognitive domain. These are beliefs such as "the world is dangerous" and "I am inadequate". In MCT these beliefs are regarded as the product of metacognitions, which generate
patterns of attention and thinking that continually generate these ideas or fix consciousness upon them. It follows that metacognitions and thinking patterns must be changed in the course of treatment, because they are the cause of persistent negative beliefs or "ordinary cognitions". Beliefs or schemas in CBT are not regarded by the MCT practitioner as stable entities, objects that must be dismantled, but as the results of thought processes.
From the foregoing introduction it becomes clear that MCT introduces an important distinction between cognition and metacognition, and that therapeutic work is focused primarily on the latter domain. Early forms of cognitive therapy did not point to any difference between cognition and metacognition. As an example, consider a passage from Beck's work: "While interviewing a depressed mother, I found that her thinking was controlled by erroneous ideas about herself and her world. Despite evidence to the contrary, she believed that she had failed as a mother". (Beck, 1976, p. 16).
In this case it is evident that the depressive thinking is attributed to the presence of negative beliefs to the effect that "I am a failure". Beck holds that the patient's thinking is controlled by her erroneous ideas that she is a failure.
Nevertheless, someone's belief that they are a failure will not necessarily result in that belief governing their thinking. Have all people who hold this belief become depressed? According to cognitive theory, this should have been the case, which is probably not so. In MCT the view of this situation would be different. MCT holds that most people have thoughts or beliefs to the effect that they are failures, but different people will respond to these thoughts differently depending on their metacognitions. Thus, it is metacognitive knowledge or beliefs that govern the corresponding thinking, and not ordinary cognitions.
Let us examine this question in more detail. Most people consider themselves failures at various periods of their lives, but for some this serves as an occasion to make efforts toward success again and again, whereas for others it serves as the cause of a chain of negative thoughts consisting of deliberation about their own failures and weaknesses. Therefore a mechanism is needed that accounts for the existence of different cognitive and emotional patterns of responding. The mechanism I propose is metacognition, the aspect of cognition that controls the very way a person thinks and behaves in response to thoughts, beliefs, or feelings.
In the case of the depressed mother described by Beck, we may suppose that her thinking is governed by metacognitive beliefs such as the following: "If I think about my failures and analyze why they happened, I will be a better mother." Unfortunately, the thought process of rumination that results from this metacognitive belief is unlikely to yield satisfactory answers, and the patient will continue to regard herself as a failure.
In the remainder of the chapter I will dwell in more detail on the basic principles of the theory and practice of MCT. From the basic principle of metacognition as the main driving force of psychological disorders, it follows that practice must attend not so much to analyzing and testing the individual's thoughts and beliefs as to changing how the person responds to these ideas. The focus of intervention shifts from evaluating the truthfulness of the products of cognition (for example, "I am a failure") to the cognitive processes and the metacognitions that give rise to them. The exception is those products of thinking that are themselves metacognitions, as in the case of anxiety about anxiety (for example, "worrying can harm me").
Next I will examine in more detail the concept of metacognition, in favor of which arguments have already been advanced, after which it will be possible to present the full metacognitive model of disorder.
A note on process-oriented and content-oriented therapies.
Existing cognitive-behavioral therapies are to a large extent content-oriented. Therapists deal primarily with the content of a person's thoughts and beliefs and work with that content. MCT is mainly focused on processes and on metacognitive rather than social or physical semantic content of thoughts.
For example, in traditional CBT for depression the therapist focuses attention on questions about the validity of negative thoughts and beliefs about the self, the world and the future. This is expressed in therapist questions such as “What is the cognitive distortion in your thought?” and “What are the counterarguments?”. At the same time, in MCT the therapist seeks to reduce the amount of rumination, modifies negative beliefs about the uncontrollability of this process, and works with positive metacognitive beliefs about the need to engage in this process in response to emotions of sadness. This is illustrated by metacognitive-level questions such as “Can you postpone ruminating in response to a thought?” and “What are the disadvantages of dwelling on this thought?”
By “thought content” we mean the knowledge that is stored or present in consciousness. Beliefs can be thought of as part of this library of information and knowledge.
When we say “processes”, we mean actions relating to the use of this knowledge or the learning of new knowledge. Using the library metaphor, processes can be compared to searching for a book, locating it in space, reading the information and using that information to change what we do, think or know. Processes link knowledge (beliefs) to emotional and behavioural consequences, and it is the processes that determine the effect these experiences have on beliefs.
We cannot work directly with knowledge, such as the belief “I am worthless”. We can only work with the processes of retrieving and using this information. It is also reasonable to assume that our thoughts and conscious beliefs are a consequence of experiencing processes. What we know is not the content of thought, it is the result of the processes that use the content of thought. Patients say that they feel “bad”, that they are “going to have a heart attack” and that they are “worthless” because time and again they engage in processes that generate and maintain this erroneous information.
The central idea of MCT is to change cognitive processes, such as thinking style, the process of allocating attention, and specific strategies for using internal information to form judgements.
Having
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Часть 1 Metacognitive processes distortions and therapy, metacognition
Часть 2 - Metacognitive processes distortions and therapy, metacognition
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