Investigating the effects of metacognition in dynamic control tasks

Abstract

Metacogntion is a broadly studied concept in cognitive science, educational psychology and developmental psychology. Prior research on metacognition shows that successful learning is often based on specific metacognitive activities which have to be frequently monitored during learning [1]. An important limitation in prior studies is that most experimental tasks were designed within static environments. Only rarely have researchers investigated metacognition during dynamic decision making. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the significance of metacognition while training to execute dynamic control tasks. Findings from this study demonstrate that the experimental group which was provided more focused feedback had higher situation awareness accuracy, relative to the groups which received relatively less focused feedback or no feedback. In addition, results indicated that metacognitive behaviors which were measured using subjective ratings of Pre and Post Meta probes showed different patterns. Preliminary findings provides evidence that enhanced metacognition has a significant impact on actual situation awareness in dynamic control tasks. Detecting causes for these changes is the next step of the research. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.