Transcript Maryland Metacognition Seminar

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Maryland Metacognition Seminar
INTERPRETING METACOGNITIVE EXPERIENCES
DAVID MIELE
DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, UMCP
6 APRIL 2012, 12:00 PM
A. V. WILLIAMS BLDG., RM. 3258, COLLEGE PARK
ABSTRACT:
It is well established that people use their metacognitive experiences, such as the
feelings of fluency that accompany their information processing, as cues when
assessing their own knowledge and learning; but, precisely how and when they
interpret these cues to form metacognitive judgments is not well understood. For
example, it was previously assumed that people interpret their feelings of processing
fluency during learning as signaling relatively high levels of comprehension and
memory. However, in recent studies that I conducted with both children and adults,
this was only true of people who viewed intelligence as a fixed attribute, and who
presumably interpreted feelings of processing difficulty as an indication that they
were reaching the limits of their ability to learn the material. In contrast, people who
viewed intelligence as a malleable attribute that develops through effort, and who did
not tend to interpret experiences of processing difficulty as pertaining to some innate
ability, did not report higher levels of comprehension and memory as fluency
increased. Based on these studies, as well as recent findings from social and cognitive
psychology, I will propose a model that attempts to explain the manner in which
metacognitive experiences are used (at both implicit and explicit levels of processing)
to form metacognitive judgments.