Hong Seok-Sung, Bae Jinhee, Son Lisa K, Kim Kyungil
Social Science Institute, Ajou University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
Brain Science, Institute Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Front Psychol. 2023 Mar 13;14:1110211. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1110211. eCollection 2023.
Metacognitive monitoring ability enables you to learn and solve problems more efficiently through appropriate strategies. At the same time, those who are high in monitoring ability are known to allocate more cognitive resources to the perception and control of negative emotions, as compared to those with low metacognitive ability. Therefore, while monitoring emotions may help reduce the negative emotion by enabling efficient control, it could also interrupt the use of an efficient strategy when problem-solving, as cognitive resources may be depleted.
To confirm this, we divided participants into groups with high and low monitoring abilities and manipulated emotions by presenting emotional videos. Subsequent to the manipulation, problem solving strategies were examined using items from the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT).
Results showed that those who were high in monitoring ability were shown to use more efficient problem-solving strategies than those who were lower in monitoring ability, but only in situations when positive or no emotions were manipulated. However, as hypothesized, when negative emotion was aroused, the CRT scores of high monitoring ability group were significantly lowered, decreasing to the same performance as those with low monitoring ability. We also found that metacognitive monitoring ability, when interacting with emotion, indirectly affected CRT scores, and that monitoring and control, when affected by emotion, were mediated in the process.
These findings suggest a novel and complicated interaction between emotion and metacognition and warrant further research.
元认知监控能力使你能够通过适当的策略更高效地学习和解决问题。同时，与元认知能力低的人相比，元认知监控能力高的人已知会将更多认知资源分配到对负面情绪的感知和控制上。因此，虽然监控情绪可能通过实现有效控制来帮助减少负面情绪，但在解决问题时，它也可能会干扰有效策略的使用，因为认知资源可能会被耗尽。
为了证实这一点，我们将参与者分为监控能力高和低的两组，并通过播放情感视频来操控情绪。在操控之后，使用认知反思测试（CRT）中的题目来检验解决问题的策略。
结果显示，监控能力高的人比监控能力低的人使用更有效的解决问题策略，但这仅在操控的是积极情绪或无情绪的情况下。然而，正如所假设的那样，当引发负面情绪时，高监控能力组的CRT分数显著降低，降至与低监控能力组相同的水平。我们还发现，元认知监控能力在与情绪相互作用时，会间接影响CRT分数，并且情绪对监控和控制的影响在这个过程中起到了中介作用。
这些发现表明情绪与元认知之间存在一种新颖且复杂的相互作用，值得进一步研究。
