The study of metacognition, broadly defined, is the study of how humans thinkabout and control their own thought processes. The study of metacognition canbe divided into two broad areas; research on metacognitive monitoring andresearch on metacognitive control.
Metacognitive monitoring refers to the monitoring of one's own thoughtprocesses and one's existing state of knowledge. Empirical research onmetacognitive monitoring has focused on whether people are accurate atpredicting their own memory and problem solving performance (e.g. Leonesio &Nelson, 1990, Metcalfe, 1986a, 1986b, Reder & Ritter, 1992).
Metacognitive control can be generally defined as the volitional direction ofone's own thought and memory retrieval processes. Metacognitive control incombination with metacognitive monitoring judgments such as judgments about lackof knowledge (e.g. Miner & Reder, 1994) determines such factors asplanning and the allocation of study time (Nelson & Leonesio, 1988), theuse of learning strategies (e.g. Pressley, et al. 1984, Reder, 1987), andthe degree of time that will be devoted to trying to recall an item from memory(e.g. Nelson, Gerler, & Narens, 1984). More general issues in the study ofmetacognitive control involve the question of how much control we actually haveover the choice of cognitive strategies control ( e.g. Reder & Schunn, 1995), and the influence of interest and prior knowledge on metacognitivecontrol strategies (e.g Tobias, 1994).
One of the major issues in the field of metacognition is the issue of howmetacognition should be assessed. Often, questionnaires attempting to assesspeople's awareness of memory processes are reliable but may lack validity inpredicting people's memory abilities and use of metacognitive strategies.(Searleman & Herrmann, 1994). However, some group administered measureshave shown promising results (e.g. Tobias, Hartman, Everson & Gourgey, 1991). To the extent that some metacognitive judgments may be based onautomatic processes that are not available to introspection, the assessmentthrough self- report techniques of metacognitive processes will always be achallenge.
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