Metacognition: Decision making processes in self-monitoring and self-regulation

The study of metacognition has been attracting the attention of philosophers who are concerned with issues of agency, consciousness, and subjective experience because of the interest in subjective feelings and self-regulation. Optimal cognitive performance depends critically on the effectiveness of self-monitoring and self-regulation. This chapter focuses narrowly on experimental work on the metacognitive processes that occur during learning and remembering. This work is more tightly linked to issues discussed in the context of judgment and decision making. The bulk of the experimental work has concerned three types of judgments. First are judgments of learning (JOLs) elicited following the study of each item. Second are feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments that are elicited following blocked recall. The third are confidence judgments involving assessments about a response that has been produced.