Supra-personal cognitive control and metacognition

Shea, Nicholas; Boldt, Annika; Bang, Dan; Yeung, Nick; Heyes, Cecilia; Frith, C. D.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.01.006

Cited by 280 publications

(278 citation statements)

References 77 publications

(77 reference statements)

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“…This would allow infants to gain relevant information when they estimate that their state of knowledge is insufficient. Relatedly, Shea and colleagues recently proposed that explicit metacognition evolved in humans specifically to broadcast metacognitive representations between agents and allow efficient cooperation (33). In light of our present results, we suggest that explicit metacognition is useful not only for cooperation but also for learning from others.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

“…The fact that infants can communicate metacognitive information to others suggests that they consciously experience their own uncertainty. Indeed, it is generally assumed that to be communicated, even in a nonverbal fashion, representations must be consciously accessed (32)(33)(34). In this sense, our results not only provide evidence that infants can form metacognitive representations but also that they can consciously access them (33).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although several animal species have been shown to monitor their own uncertainty and use this information to regulate behavior (27,28), only humans are able to explicitly communicate these metacognitive representations to others (i.e., explicit metacognition) (33). This raises the question as to why this ability develops in human beings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know

Goupil

Romand-Monnier

Kouider

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

159

126

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Uncertainty monitoring is a core property of metacognition, allowing individuals to adapt their decision-making strategies depending on the state of their knowledge. Although it has been argued that other animals share these metacognitive abilities, only humans seem to possess the ability to explicitly communicate their own uncertainty to others. It remains unknown whether this capacity is present early in development, or whether it emerges later with the ability to verbally report one’s own mental states. Here, using a nonverbal memory-monitoring paradigm, we show that 20-month-olds can monitor and report their own uncertainty. Infants had to remember the location of a hidden toy before pointing to indicate where they wanted to recover it. In an experimental group, infants were given the possibility to ask for help through nonverbal communication when they had forgotten the toy location. Compared with a control group in which infants had no other option but to decide by themselves, infants given the opportunity to ask for help used this option strategically to improve their performance. Asking for help was used selectively to avoid making errors and to decline difficult choices. These results demonstrate that infants are able to successfully monitor their own uncertainty and share this information with others to fulfill their goals.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know

Goupil

Romand-Monnier

Kouider

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

159

126

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“…A number of recent studies have identified the neural correlates of confidence in perceptual and economic decision-making (44,45). Importantly, these studies focused on single participants, leaving open the possibility that confidence as communicated in social interaction may have a different set of neural correlates, or, at least, involve other stages of processing (46). Indeed, it has been suggested that limitations on the processes underlying communicated confidence may explain why groups sometimes fail to outperform their members (8).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equality bias impairs collective decision-making across cultures

Mahmoodi

Bang

Olsen

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

123

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We tend to think that everyone deserves an equal say in a debate. This seemingly innocuous assumption can be damaging when we make decisions together as part of a group. To make optimal decisions, group members should weight their differing opinions according to how competent they are relative to one another; whenever they differ in competence, an equal weighting is suboptimal. Here, we asked how people deal with individual differences in competence in the context of a collective perceptual decision-making task. We developed a metric for estimating how participants weight their partner's opinion relative to their own and compared this weighting to an optimal benchmark. Replicated across three countries (Denmark, Iran, and China), we show that participants assigned nearly equal weights to each other's opinions regardless of true differences in their competence-even when informed by explicit feedback about their competence gap or under monetary incentives to maximize collective accuracy. This equality bias, whereby people behave as if they are as good or as bad as their partner, is particularly costly for a group when a competence gap separates its members.social cognition | joint decision-making | bias | equality

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“…Conception of metacognition that is, in my view, too broad. Last but not least, although some researchers conceive of metacognition also as an unconscious activity [8][9][10] and/or speak about animal metacognition [6], I will limit my discussion to the role of conscious metacognition in human decision-making.…”

Section: Introduction: What Is Metacognition and What Role It Plays Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling and Thinking about the Future: Offline Metacognition in Decision-Making

Strle¹

2016

: Interdiscip. Descr. Complex Syst.

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In the article, I will argue that metacognition plays an important role in decision-making not only as direct online monitoring and control of decision-making processes but also by enabling us to influence our decisions and actions -and mental states and processes, related to them -in an offline manner. That is, offline metacognition allows us to observe, refer to and, to a certain degree, exert influence on mental states and processes related to our decisions and actions in the way of being removed, decoupled from the task/decision at hand and present time demands. As such, it enables us to observe, form thoughts and have feelings about mental states and processes directly related to our future decisions, to plan our future decisions, to reflect on our past choices, and to think and have feelings about our broader goals, desires, and personal values that are indirectly related to our decisions.To illustrate the importance of offline metacognition in decision-making, I will firstly review and discuss some experimental findings on implementation intentions ("decisions about the future") and anticipated emotions (beliefs about future emotional states related to outcomes of our decisions). Secondly, I will argue that our ability to reflect (think and feel) on our broader goals, desires and personal values -that represent a kind of structure into which our specific decisions are embeddedreveals how offline metacognition can exert influence on our decisions also in an indirect way. All in all, I will try to show that our ability to refer to our own minds in an offline way -be it to mental states and processes directly or indirectly related to specific decisions -is essential for us to decide, as we decide, and act, as we act.

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Supra-personal cognitive control and metacognition

Cited by 280 publications

References 77 publications

Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know

Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know

Equality bias impairs collective decision-making across cultures

Feeling and Thinking about the Future: Offline Metacognition in Decision-Making

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