Metacognition

Metacognition is "cognition about cognition", "thinking about thinking", or "knowing about knowing" and higher order thinking skills. It comes from the root word "meta", meaning beyond. It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving. There are generally two components of metacognition: knowledge about cognition, and regulation of cognition.

Metamemory, defined as knowing about memory and mnemonic strategies, is an especially important form of metacognition. Differences in metacognitive processing across cultures have not been widely studied, but could provide better outcomes in cross-cultural learning between teachers and students.

Some evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that metacognition is used as a survival tool, which would make metacognition the same across cultures. Writings on metacognition can be traced back at least as far as On the Soul and the Parva Naturalia of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

This higher-level cognition was given the label metacognition by American developmental psychologist John H. Flavell (1979).

The term metacognition literally means cognition about cognition, or more informally, thinking about thinking. Flavell defined metacognition as knowledge about cognition and control of cognition. For example, a person is engaging in metacognition if he notices that he is having more trouble learning A than B; [or] if it strikes him that he should double-check C before accepting it as fact. J. H. Flavell (1976, p. 232). Andreas Demetriou's theory (one of the neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development) used the term hypercognition to refer to self-monitoring, self-representation, and self-regulation processes, which are regarded as integral components of the human mind. Moreover, with his colleagues, he showed that these processes participate in general intelligence, together with processing efficiency and reasoning, which have traditionally been considered to compose fluid intelligence.

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