Fleur Damien S, Bredeweg Bert, van den Bos Wouter
Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Departement of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2021 Jun 8;6(1):13. doi: 10.1038/s41539-021-00089-5.
Metacognition comprises both the ability to be aware of one's cognitive processes (metacognitive knowledge) and to regulate them (metacognitive control). Research in educational sciences has amassed a large body of evidence on the importance of metacognition in learning and academic achievement. More recently, metacognition has been studied from experimental and cognitive neuroscience perspectives. This research has started to identify brain regions that encode metacognitive processes. However, the educational and neuroscience disciplines have largely developed separately with little exchange and communication. In this article, we review the literature on metacognition in educational and cognitive neuroscience and identify entry points for synthesis. We argue that to improve our understanding of metacognition, future research needs to (i) investigate the degree to which different protocols relate to the similar or different metacognitive constructs and processes, (ii) implement experiments to identify neural substrates necessary for metacognition based on protocols used in educational sciences, (iii) study the effects of training metacognitive knowledge in the brain, and (iv) perform developmental research in the metacognitive brain and compare it with the existing developmental literature from educational sciences regarding the domain-generality of metacognition.
元认知既包括对自身认知过程的觉察能力（元认知知识），也包括对这些过程进行调控的能力（元认知控制）。教育科学领域的研究积累了大量证据，证明元认知在学习和学业成就中的重要性。最近，人们从实验和认知神经科学的角度对元认知展开了研究。这项研究已开始确定编码元认知过程的脑区。然而，教育学科和神经科学学科在很大程度上是各自独立发展的，几乎没有交流与沟通。在本文中，我们回顾了教育和认知神经科学领域中关于元认知的文献，并确定了整合的切入点。我们认为，为了增进对元认知的理解，未来的研究需要：（i）调查不同实验方案与相似或不同元认知结构及过程的关联程度；（ii）基于教育科学中使用的实验方案开展实验，以确定元认知所需的神经基质；（iii）研究在大脑中训练元认知知识的效果；（iv）开展元认知大脑的发展性研究，并将其与教育科学领域现有的关于元认知领域一般性的发展性文献进行比较。
