Metacognition

General Features of Metacognition

Metacognition refers to knowledge and regulation of cognitive processes. An individual's knowledge about cognition is generally considered to be the relatively stable knowledge that he or she possesses about various cognitive processes. Examples include the knowledge that remembering the gist of a passage is easier than remembering a passage word for word; knowing that some individuals are better comprehenders than others; or knowing that it would be easier to understand a passage about a familiar than an unfamiliar topic. Such knowledge, generally assessed though interviews or questionnaires, may develop through direct instruction as well as an individual's experience with a variety of cognitive tasks encountered during a lifetime of learning.

Regulation (or monitoring) of cognition involves an individual's ability to assess how he or she is doing on any particular cognitive task, such as solving a problem or remembering a list of items, as well as his or her ability to use compensatory strategies to solve any difficulties encountered while engaged in the cognitive task. The term monitoring in this context refers to the combined activities of assessment and strategy use, as strategy use itself has been referred to as regulation in the literature by some authors. Such strategies could involve using contextual information to aid in the understanding of an unknown word, rereading sections of a passage to help resolve comprehension failures, or attempting to relate new information one is trying to remember to previously acquired knowledge. Monitoring of cognition is assessed though a variety of research paradigms.

Metacomprehension

Metacomprehension includes knowledge about and monitoring of comprehension.

Knowledge about Comprehension

Children's and adults' knowledge about comprehension is generally assessed through the use of an interview format or a questionnaire. Oftentimes interviews or questionnaires will include questions that assess individuals' knowledge about person variables (e.g., what makes someone a good comprehender), task variables (e.g., what types of comprehension tasks may be easier or more difficult than others), and strategy variables (e.g., what strategies one might employ to better understand text material). Investigators examining children's knowledge of comprehension have found that such knowledge increases as a function of age (Myers & Paris, 1978) and is related to children's reading skills (Ehrlich, Kurtz-Costes, & Loridant, 1993). Knowledge of comprehension, particularly knowledge of strategies to employ to better understand, is related to comprehension performance in adults (Moore, Zabrucky, & Commander, 1997). Knowledge of comprehension is also related to academic achievement in adults (Taraban, Rynearson, & Kerr, 2000).

...