What is METACOGNITION? -Examples and strategies

Our brain is a predictive machine that helps us reduce the uncertainty in our environment. Thanks to the brain and nervous system, we are able to understand the world around us. Among many mental abilities, we can highlight those related to our processing mental, such as learning, memory, language, thinking and metacognition.

You know what is metacognition? Have you heard of Theory of Mind? Keep reading the Psychology-online article and you will get the answers to all these doubts. Next, we tell you what is metacognition, examples and strategies metacognitive.

Index

1. What is metacognition?
2. Types of metacognition
3. Examples of metacognition
4. Predictive ability of metacognition
5. Metacognitive strategies

The definition of metacognition, also known as Theory of mind, is the innate ability of people to understand and predict our own behavior and that of the people around us. Refers to all cognitive processes, such as thinking about your own thinking and learning to regulate it. We develop it around 4 years of age and human beings are the only ones who have this ability.

There is theory of mind functions that are born in us and others that are developing. It represents that when a person develops metacognition, he is able to understand his mind and that of others. When metacognition is not developed, pathologies such as autism can appear. However, there are techniques to develop theory of mind in children with autism.

There are different types of metacognition linked to different cognitive abilities. Each of the metacognitive modalities helps to plan, organize and optimize thinking. The types of metacognition are as follows:

• Memory metacognition: the knowledge of the capacity of memory to relate and contrast knowledge already stored with new knowledge.
• Metacognition of attention: know the ability to focus attention on a specific task or situation. Being aware of the factors that make it difficult to maintain attention helps to optimize this capacity.
• Metacognition of understanding: be aware of the ability to understand one or more concepts and use them. Understanding allows us to learn to learn.
• Metacognition of thought: the knowledge we have of our own thinking. This ability allows us to reflect on how and what we think.

The concept of metacognition or theory of mind is present in areas such as education and psychology, since it is related to the way of think about our thinking and our way of learning.

There are many types of metacognition. Next, we are going to see examples of metacognition:

• Reflect on whether a task is going to be difficult.
• Control the use of learning strategies in every situation.
• Assess our strengths and weaknesses at the level of cognition.
• To be aware of mental processes that we use in each situation.
• Realize if we use a learning strategy that is not effective.

Our brain has the ability to predict thanks to metacognition, a fact that helps us reduce the uncertainty of what may happen in different situations and contexts. We are going to expose some situations to better understand the concept:

Situation 1

“You are alone at home, it is 4 in the morning and you are sleeping in your room. The noise of someone trying to open your front door wakes you up. What do you think will happen next?”

In this case, you would surely think something negative, such as that someone is trying to break into your house to rob you. This means that your mind has predicted what may happen to help you act correctly at that moment and find the best solution.

Situation 2

“You are in a bar talking to your friends and suddenly one of them gets up and leaves. What you think?”

We automatically try to understand why he got up and we are able to think that he might have been bothered by a comment or that he has to go to the bathroom, for example.

We understand, well, that the mind helps us develop mental states to explain the behavior and to understand and predict the consequences that our actions can lead to. And you can predict not only your behavior, but that of the person who is trying to enter your house or the person who has suddenly got up from the table. That is, the people around you.

We can learn to learn and develop metacognitive strategies that do not help make better decisions in each situation. David Paul Ausubel, psychologist and pedagogue, talks about the significant learning versus him rote learning.

Meaningful learning is about the person making sense of the information received, relating concepts and building new information based on what was previously learned. On the other hand, when we use rote learning, the person makes associations, memorizes concepts and facts without the need to understand the information. It is passive learning since new content accumulates in memory without being associated with what is already known. So this information is more likely to be forgotten.

Metacognition in learning

What is metacognition in learning? The goal in education is for students to develop meaningful learning that takes into account the abilities of each one to generate cognitive skills. When we learn we develop different strategies that allow us to learn, for example: we classify information, make diagrams or associate knowledge to better remember them.

Related to the above, the metacognition ladder is the thought-based learning process. Next, we are going to see the four phases of this process:

1. Be aware of what has been learned.
2. Remember the procedure of how it has been learned.
3. Reflect on what use has been learned.
4. Being able to use what has been learned in other situations.

Metacognitive strategies

Metacognitive strategies influence how we process information and they help us regulate our learning. However, a strategy is not always good for everyone, so it is important to teach students to be aware of their thoughts and to be able to plan, control and evaluate the learning.

Some examples of metacognitive strategies are do self-assessment exercises after having studied something in particular, try different ways of doing the same activity to assess what strategy is best for us or make concept maps to relate different concepts, among many others examples. In short, metacognitive strategies allow us to understand and efficiently develop the acquisition of our knowledge.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is metacognition? Examples and strategies, we recommend that you enter our category of Cognitive psychology.

• J. Tirapu-Ustárroz et al. (2007). What is the theory of mind? REV NEUROL, 44 (8): 479-489