Metacognition

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Metacognition describes dealing with one's own cognitive processes (for example thoughts , opinions , attitudes , attention , creativity ). Metacognitions include, on the one hand, knowledge and, on the other hand, control (monitoring and self-regulation) over one's own cognitions. One could clearly say that they are thinking about one's own thinking or knowing about one's own knowledge. The designation is derived from the Greek μετά, meta (here correspondingly 'about') and cognition , a collective term for all mental processes and contents that are related to perception and cognition .

The word 'metacognition' goes back to John H. Flavell (Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University ) and Henry M. Wellman (Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan ). Today the neuroscientific fundamentals are also being researched.

Concept and dimensions of metacognition

Thinking can be seen as a process that is prone to many disturbances. External stimuli are recorded in the ' sensory register' and from there passed on to the short-term memory , which encodes the individual pieces of information and thus creates meaningful elements of knowledge. This knowledge is processed by specialized 'buffers' and passed on to long-term memory , where it is 'archived' as semantic or episodic knowledge . There meanings and individual information can be incorrectly assigned, the long-term memory can store the information elements incorrectly or the process can be blocked as a whole. As a result of such disruptions, knowledge elements can no longer be “tracked down” or only with great difficulty. Metacognition "plans, controls and controls thought processes with the intention of optimizing them and minimizing failures [...]" by reminding the mind - figuratively speaking - of these general processes.

According to Flavell (1992, 1993) two dimensions can be distinguished:

  • metacognitive knowledge as a declarative aspect and
  • metacognitive monitoring and self-regulation as an executive aspect .

The declarative aspect in turn comprises three sub-dimensions:

  • personal knowledge - all knowledge one has about one's own thinking and memory;
  • task-related knowledge - all knowledge of what a task is like and what demands it makes;
  • Strategic knowledge - all knowledge that makes it possible to evaluate possible solutions in terms of their suitability for coping with the respective task and to assess alternative possible solutions in terms of their effectiveness.

The executive aspect comprises two basic processes: metacognitive control (self-regulation) and control (self-monitoring). The metacognitive control refers to all activities of planning, regulation and evaluation during the processing of a task. The control determines how far you are in this processing, whether you are on the way to the goal and whether you have reached the intermediate goals set in the planning or even the final goal.

Teasdale (1999) also adds metacognitive understanding as a third dimension. This means the experience of perceiving one's own thoughts as thoughts and not as reality (see also mindfulness-based cognitive therapy ).

Metacognition experiments in monkeys

Experiments by a research group led by J. David Smith show that rhesus monkeys are capable of metacognition, that is, of reflecting on their own knowledge.

At the end of 2004, the result of a behavioral biological experiment was published that made it clear that animals also reflect on their behavior and adapt to their level of knowledge.

The following experiment was carried out with rhesus monkeys: A rhesus monkey sits in front of four opaque tubes. A researcher put a tasty piece of food in one of these tubes. Without hesitation, the monkey grabs the appropriate tube, takes out the food and consumes the delicacy. Before that he had seen exactly in which tube the food was hidden. The experimenter at the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda is now filling a tube with food again. This time, however, the rhesus monkey's view is blocked and he cannot see where the food is being hidden. In response, the monkey looks into the tubes, then selects the right one and consumes the food. The researcher Robert Hampton and his colleagues in the neuropsychological department tested several rhesus monkeys in this way. The researchers were concerned with the question of whether rhesus monkeys have memory awareness, i.e. whether they are able to consciously access their memory and consequently to know if they know or if they do not know something. This ability is called metacognition in technical terms and is already counted as a higher form of consciousness. Until recently, people were only expected to have such a degree of reflection. Today scientists are looking for these skills in the animal kingdom as well.

The research group led by Robert Hampton was therefore interested in whether the rhesus monkeys would be aware if they did not know where the reward is and whether they would change their behavior as a result by looking into the tubes. In fact, this assumption was confirmed in the experiment. If the rhesus monkeys knew where the reward was, they didn't look in the tubes beforehand. They only did it when they didn't know where the food was. So they adapted their behavior to their level of knowledge. The difference in behavior of the rhesus monkeys shows that they can differentiate between knowing and not knowing, i.e. that they are memory-conscious and capable of metacognition.

A comparable situation projected onto humans would be the ability to determine whether or not we know a phone number before picking up the phone and dialing. If we know the number and are aware of this knowledge, we will dial the number without hesitation. However, if we cannot recall the number, take the time to look it up before we dial. So we know when we know and adjust our behavior accordingly.

The study further shows that memory awareness is not limited to humans and great apes, but is more widespread among primates than previously thought. Because rhesus monkeys belong to a group of apes who are not as closely related to humans as the great apes, which also have this metacognitive ability.

It is believed that the general function of memory awareness could be to enable an animal to avoid situations for which it has insufficient knowledge. There is little reason to believe that this ability is limited to primates. However, further investigations are still necessary on this hypothesis.

But one can already say with clarity: Man is not the only conscious being on earth. Man is not the result of any progress in evolution either . Man is a specific species among many others that have evolved and specialized in parallel to one another.

Experts suspect that consciousness may have developed in parallel with species and is therefore to be found in many species before us. The big difference between humans and animals then may not lie in the presence of consciousness, but rather in its specific content, which depends on the ecological niche , on the habitat to which the respective animal is adapted. An animal's consciousness contains the information and signals for which the animal has sensory organs, with the help of which it orientates itself and which enable it to survive in its environment. That is, the consciousness contents of different animal species are very different from each other.

The contents of consciousness that distinguish us humans are related to our elaborated, syntactic language and to our powerful memory, which enables us to plan for the longer term and to construct an autobiographical self. However, the basic ability to be conscious does not depend on it.

The University of Iowa , through experience with patients with brain damage compromising their consciousness, believed that there are two types of consciousness:

A simple, basic form, the so-called core consciousness, which occurs in many species before us, and an expanded consciousness that humans have in its most perfect form, but animals also have in gradual gradation.

From this one can deduce that the essence of core consciousness is the feeling of oneself, as an individual being. In him the sense of self grows out of a fleeting feeling of knowing. First and foremost, it depends on regions that are genetically older and located in the depths of the brain. What is less old, however, is the expansion of consciousness through a powerful memory, which makes it possible to store extensive information, facts and autobiographical memories.

See also

literature

  • Michael J. Beran, Johannes Brandl, Josef Perner, Joëlle Proust: Foundations of Metacognition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-964673-9 .
  • John H. Flavell, Henry M. Wellman: Metamemory. In: RV Kail, JW Hagen (Ed.): Perspectives on the development of memory and cognition. Hillsdale, NJ 1977, pp. 3-33.
  • John H. Flavell: Cognitive Development . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-12-922411-4 .
  • Robert R. Hampton, Bennett L. Schwartz: Episodic memory in nonhumans: What, and where, is when? In: Current Opinion in Neurobiology. Volume 14, No. 2, 2004, pp. 192-197, doi: 10.1016 / j.conb.2004.03.006 .
  • Hope J. Hartman (Ed.): Metacognition in Learning and Instruction: Theory, Research and Practice. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 2002, ISBN 0-7923-6838-X .
  • Ruth Kaiser, Arnim Kaiser: Train thinking, optimize learning. Metacognition as a key competence. 2nd Edition. ZIEL, Augsburg 2006.
  • Ruth Kaiser, Arnim Kaiser: Successful learning through metacognition. In: Fundamentals of Continuing Education. 3/2011, pp. 14-17.
  • David Premack , Guy Woodruff: Does the chipmanzee have a theory of mind? In: Behavioral & Brain Sciences. Volume 1, No. 4, 1978, pp. 515-526, doi: 10.1017 / S0140525X00076512 .
  • Joëlle Proust: The Philosophy of Metacognition. Mental Agency and Self-Awareness. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-960216-2 .
  • Arthur P. Shimamura: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of metacognition. In: Consciousness and Cognition. Volume 9, No. 2, 2000, pp. 313-323, doi: 10.1006 / ccog.2000.0450 .
  • Fritz Strack , Herbert Bless: Memory for nonoccurrences: Metacognitive and presuppositional strategies. In: Journal of Memory and Language. Volume 33, No. 2, 1994, pp. 203-217, doi: 10.1006 / jmla.1994.1010 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ AF Rapp: Cod. Lexicon of Psychology . ( hogrefe.com ).
  2. ^ Diana Dimitrova: The concept of meta-competence: Theoretical and empirical investigation using the example of the automotive industry . Springer-Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8350-0925-7 , pp. 69 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ^ Arnim Kaiser: Self-learning competence, metacognition and further training. In: Arnim Kaiser (Ed.): Self-learning competence. Metacognitive foundations of self-regulated learning and their practical implementation 2003. p. 100.
  4. Arnim Kaiser, Ruth Kaiser: Train thinking, optimize learning. Metacognition as a key competence. 2006, p. 31.
  5. a b Martin Hautzinger, Paul Pauli: Subject area B: Methodology and methods / Psychological intervention methods / Psychotherapeutic methods . Hogrefe Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8409-1513-0 , pp. 409-410 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. Justin J. Couchman et al .: Beyond Stimulus Cues and Reinforcement Signals: A New Approach to Animal Metacognition. In: Journal of Comparative Psychology. Volume 124, No. 4, 2010, pp. 356–368, doi: 10.1037 / a0020129 , PMC 2991470 (free full text)
  7. ^ RR Hampton, A. Zivin, EA Murray: Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Discriminate Between Knowing and Not Knowing and Collect Information As Needed Before Acting. In: Animal Cognition. Volume 7, 2004, pp. 239-254.
  8. ^ RR Hampton, BL Schwartz: Episodic memory in nonhumans: What, and where, is when? In: Current Opinion in Neurobiology. Volume 14, 2004, pp. 192-197.