Children's monetary decision making: The role of metacognition in everyday problem solving

Abstract

The importance of adult and youth financial literacy in various countries is being increasingly recognised as both the spending potential and access of Singaporeans increases with the rise of affluence in society. It is therefore important to understand how children exercise logical reasoning when making monetary decisions so that we may design interventions to foster children's monetary decision making. Metacognition is an important aspect of problem solving because it includes problem-relevant awareness of one's thinking, monitoring of cognitive processes, regulation of cognitive processes, and the application of heuristics. It is especially essential in the context of solving everyday problems when problems may be highly emergent and ill-structured. This paper discusses the role of metacogntion in children's monetary decision process. Next, it argues for the importance and implications of fostering metacognition to develop children's monetary decision making processes with the introduction of a problem solving framework.