The future of metacognition research: balancing construct breadth with measurement rigor

Abstract

Foundational work in the psychology of metacognition identified a distinction between metacognitive knowledge (stable beliefs about one’s capacities) and metacognitive experiences (local evaluations of performance). More recently, the field has focused on the latter half of the construct in the form of confidence estimates, developing tasks and metrics that seek to identify metacognitive capacities from momentary estimates of confidence in performance, and providing precise computational accounts of metacognitive failure. However, progress in formalising models of metacognitive judgments may have come at a cost of ignoring broader elements of the psychology of metacognition – such as how stable meta-knowledge is formed, how social cognition and metacognition interact, and how we evaluate affective states that do not have an obvious ground truth. We propose that construct breadth in metacognition research can be restored while maintaining rigour in measurement (for example, through computational modelling) and highlight promising avenues for extending both temporality and scope in the study of metacognition. Such a research programme is well placed to recapture qualitative features of metacognitive knowledge and experience that were part of the original construct, while maintaining the psychophysical rigor that characterises modern research on confidence and performance monitoring.

How do confidence and self-beliefs relate in psychopathology: a transdiagnostic approach

“…Also, the influence of higher-order cognitive states, such as emotional distress or motivational state on confidence should be taken into consideration, since they could play a possible role as additional underlying factors for changes in metacognitive abilities. Here, we have relied on metacognition as typically defined in the field of cognitive neuroscience, quantifying the correspondence between subjective confidence judgments and objective task performance 50 . However, in other fields such as cognitive psychology models, the definition of metacognitions encompasses other processes, including intersubjective processes.…”

Exogenous and Endogenous Sources of Uncertainty Inform Global Performance Monitoring

“…Uniquely, we also asked participants not only for a point estimate of their performance but also for a range around it, stepping away from the classical reports of confidence. The need for such new paradigms aiming to expand both the scale and the scope of metacognitive reports has been highlighted as a crucial development for future metacognitive neuroscience (Katyal and Fleming 2023;Rahnev et al 2022).…”

Exogenous and endogenous sources of uncertainty inform global performance monitoring

“…Uniquely, we also asked participants not only for a point estimate of their performance, but also for a range around it, stepping away from the classical reports of confidence. The need for such new paradigms aiming to expand both the scale and the scope of metacognitive reports has been highlighted as a crucial development for future metacognitive neuroscience (Katyal and Fleming 2023).…”