Cognitive Self-regulation and Metacognition in Comparative and Developmental Perspective

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When people monitor their own thoughts, memories, and how well they are learning, they are engaging in metacognition. It is considered a hallmark feature of the human mind, but metacognition is also susceptible to error. Adult humans and children often mistakenly assume they have learned material better than they really have, or they mistakenly trust that they can remember something that they will likely forget. Metacognition emerges fairly slowly in human development and is not fully evident until the age of six years (or even older). Young students who are learning new facts and skills and those in the workforce who are training in new techniques need to be able to engage in metacognitive control and monitoring. Decision makers in business and politics must know how to deal with “known unknowns” by recognizing potential errors in their thinking and adjusting behavior to reduce uncertainty. Understanding how younger and older children engage in metacognition similarly or differently can provide insights into normal developmental paths for this important skill. It is also deeply debated as to whether species other than humans can think about their own thinking. If they can do this, it would inform issues of animal welfare, ethics, and a reconsideration of whether metacognition critically relies on language or other uniquely human cognitive capacities. Understanding whether non-verbal species can perform metacognitive tasks will provide insights into the essential or perhaps non-essential role of language, culture, and formal education in metacognitive abilities. These efforts can inform new approaches to improve study habits in students and improve self-guided routines for those learning skills such as visual classification (for example, “is that a tumor in this x-ray, or not, or is it too hard to tell and I need to look for other information?”). These studies will also refine animal models of metacognition, introduce new tests of metacognitive control in children, and illustrate the strengths or weaknesses of metacognition in children and monkeys. The data will inform efforts to train metacognitive strategies in groups that show an impairment in this ability such as those struggling to learn new information because they cannot gauge their own uncertainty (e.g., students) and those who feel overconfident in situations where they truly do not know enough to stop studying or learning (e.g., trainees in new professions).This project presents computer tasks to preschool and early elementary school children, human adults, capuchin monkeys, and rhesus monkeys. Individuals perform primary goals such as remembering information or judging picture sizes or colors while also considering how well they are doing at those tasks. Some tasks assess how these groups use internal feelings such as fluency (for example, how easily a memory comes to mind) to monitor their cognition. Some tasks assess whether individuals can anticipate future memory problems and commit themselves to re-study material when they are at risk of forgetting. Other tasks assess whether individuals can use strategies to make difficult-to-remember information easier to remember or to selectively eliminate hard-to-remember material from a test so that they can perform better overall. These techniques are designed to track two important aspects of metacognition. One is the ability to monitor cognition for potential moments of uncertainty and difficulty. For example, this happens when someone knows they cannot answer a question because the right answer is not retrievable in memory, or they simply do not know the answer. An equally important but less well understood aspect involves the control strategies that are engaged when one must overcome uncertainty or difficulty. These include strategies to seek more information before choosing or deciding, to study material longer to learn it better, or even to recruit help from others when unsure. Ultimately, monitoring and control of cognition are essential to a well-educated and well-trained population. As part of this project to assess monitoring and control of cognition, the investigators will be training and mentoring a new generation of scientists to engage in research with children and nonhuman animals, and the results of this project will be shared with the public through traditional and social media outlets.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.