Cognitive Self-regulation and Metacognition in Comparative and Developmental Perspective

当人们监控自己的思想、记忆和学习情况时，他们就是在进行元认知。它被认为是人类思维的一个标志性特征，但元认知也容易出错。成年人和儿童经常错误地认为他们学到了比实际学得更好的材料，或者他们错误地相信他们可以记住他们可能会忘记的东西。元认知在人类的发展中出现得相当缓慢，直到六岁(甚至更大)才完全显现出来。正在学习新事实和新技能的年轻学生和正在接受新技术培训的劳动力需要能够从事元认知控制和监控。商界和政界的决策者必须知道如何通过认识到他们思维中的潜在错误并调整行为来减少不确定性，从而处理“已知的未知因素”。了解年龄较小和年龄较大的儿童在元认知方面的相似或不同之处，可以为这项重要技能的正常发展路径提供洞察力。关于人类以外的物种是否可以思考自己的思维，也存在着深刻的争论。如果他们能做到这一点，这将为动物福利、伦理问题提供信息，并重新考虑元认知是否严重依赖于语言或其他人类特有的认知能力。了解非语言物种是否可以执行元认知任务，将有助于我们深入了解语言、文化和正规教育在元认知能力中的重要或非关键作用。这些努力可以提供新的方法来改善学生的学习习惯，并为那些学习技能的人改进自我指导的程序，比如视觉分类(例如，“这张X光片上有没有肿瘤，或者太难辨别了，我需要寻找其他信息？”)。这些研究还将改进元认知的动物模型，引入儿童元认知控制的新测试，并阐明儿童和猴子的元认知的优势或劣势。这些数据将为培训元认知策略的努力提供信息，这些群体表现出这种能力的损害，例如那些因为无法判断自己的不确定性而难以学习新信息的人(例如，学生)，以及那些在确实缺乏足够知识而无法停止学习或学习的情况下感到过度自信的人(例如，新职业的实习生)。这个项目向学龄前和小学早期的儿童、人类成年人、卷尾猴和恒河猴展示计算机任务。个人完成主要目标，如记忆信息或判断图片大小或颜色，同时也考虑他们在这些任务中做得有多好。一些任务评估这些人如何使用流利性等内在感觉(例如，记忆的出现有多容易)来监控他们的认知。一些任务评估个人是否能够预见未来的记忆问题，并在他们面临遗忘的风险时承诺重新学习材料。其他任务是评估个体是否可以使用策略来使难记的信息更容易记住，或者有选择地从测试中删除难记的材料，以便他们能够整体表现更好。这些技术旨在追踪元认知的两个重要方面。其一是监控对潜在不确定和困难时刻的认知能力。例如，当某人知道他们无法回答一个问题时，因为无法在内存中检索到正确的答案，或者他们只是不知道答案，就会发生这种情况。同样重要但不太被理解的一个方面涉及当一个人必须克服不确定性或困难时所采用的控制策略。这些策略包括在选择或决定之前寻求更多信息的策略，为了更好地学习材料而学习更长时间的策略，甚至在不确定时从他人那里寻求帮助。归根结底，对认知的监测和控制对于受过良好教育和训练有素的人群来说是必不可少的。作为评估认知监测和控制的项目的一部分，研究人员将培训和指导新一代科学家从事儿童和非人类动物的研究，该项目的结果将通过传统和社交媒体与公众分享。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.