Metacognition and Self-Confidence Flashcards
What is metacognition
Knowing about knowing or thinking about thinking
- Assessment of one’s own competency in having understanding a task
- Often referred to as a higher level of thinking
- Sometimes referred to as rationality or wisdom
What are the two basic components of metacognition?
Monitoring and Controlling
Explain the Nelson and Naren (1990) model of metacognition
- Object-level processes are monitored and controlled by feedforward or feedback loops at meta level processes
- JOL are made at the time of knowledge acquisition where individuals monitor degree to which they learn information
- Object level processes are controlled by (selection of appropriate and supression of innappropriate signals) by meta level processes in the PFC
Explain Schrew and Denison’s model of metacognition (1994)
Metacognition is made up of:
Knowledge about cognition:
- ‘Self’ and ‘strategies’
- ‘How’
- ‘When’ and ‘Why’
Regulation of cognition
- Comprehension monitoring
- Evaluation
- Planning
- Information management strategies
Explain the more recent model of metacognition by Ackerman and Thompson (2017)- ‘meta-reasoning’.
- Meta reasoning refers to the monitoring the progress of our reasoning and problem solving activities
- Regulating time and effort devoted to them
List the practical applications of Metacognition
- Developmental/Educational psychology
- Forensic psychology (eyewitness testimonies)
- Organisational psychology/economics/medicine
- Human factors such as ‘fatigue’
Explain Stankov’s model of metacognition
Control processes take place prior to or during cognitive activity
Monitoring processes take place during or after cognitive activity and depend on task difficulty, domain familiarity and automaticity. Watch, check, appraise or judge the quality of one’s own cognitive work
List the various Measures of Self-Confidence
Trait Sport Confidence Inventory
Trait robustness of Self-confidence Inventory (TROSCI)
Self-report: Physical confidence
Personality Evaluation Inventory (PEI)
Individual learning profile
Academic Behavioural Confidence Scale
CAPA Confidence Inventory
Self efficacy:
- Mathematics self efficacy scale
Online, performance based measures:
- On-task judgements of accuracy and calibration indices
Describe the Hard-easy effect
People tend to be underconfident when the perceive the task as easy, but they tend to be overconfidence when the perceive the task as hard
- In other words, judgements about performance go from under to overconfidence as task difficulty increases.
Describe the key points from ‘No Man’s land’ (Stankov, 1999)
- Debates regarding the placement of metacognition in the exisitng structures of personality and intellligence
- Seen as a higher level of cognition often referred to as rationality of wisdom
- Similar to a broad cognitive abiliy rather than the essence of intelligence ‘g’.
- Higher order, executive functioning.
Explain why Self-confidence is a general factor, its features, and its association with intelligence and personality
- Several tests capturing self-confidence indicate a general factor
- Individual differences exist in self-confidence (Individual scores are consistent between individuals, despite difficulty of the test)
- PEI and TROSCI measures converged
- On task confidence of WM, comprehension and APM converged onto a second factor
- Self-report measures of self-confidence were associated with high extroversion and negatively correlated with neuroticism
- Performance based measures of self-confidence correlated with intelligence
- Still unclear where self-confidence lies taxonomically
What is miscalibration? Describe the causal factors for miscalibration
Miscalibration is when there is a discrepancy between accuracy of performance (reality) and confidence ratings (subjective perception)
Causal factors:
Systematic errors in schemas (cognitive biases)
Ecological model: when faced with a difficult question –> people may use a cue to indicate the answer
For example: What is more north, New York or Rome? – > people tend to say NY because it is colder –> In this case, the temperature = cue
People always assume that the cue will lead them to the correct answer, but are only correct about 80% of the time.
Individual differences: Robust intercorrelation between bias scores from different tests. Higher reliability estimates for under/over confidence bias scores than for other indices of miscalibration.
Random error
What are the two factors in which g, arrogance, dogmatism and accuracy converge onto? What do these factors predict?
- Cognitive and Metacognitive confidence
- predicts accuracy, prediction and evaluation
- Cognitive and Metacognitive arrogance
- predicts confidence, prediction and evaluation
What is the relationship between the BIAS scores and cogntive ability measures?
The overall bias scores in predicting future life events were associated with various cognitive ability tests (RPM, vocabulary, esoteric analogies, LT memory). Bias scores correlated highly with each test, which indicated a general factor.
- People who are more overconfident or underconfident on one type of measure tend to be more overconfident or underconfident compared to other people
What factors affect confidence scores?
Age (older = slightly more confident), feedback (does not change confidence ratings), Gender, maths confidence (males are more confidence than females)
