The Many Facets of Metacognition: Comparing Multiple Measures of Metacognition in Healthy Individuals

Metacognition is important for successful goal-directed behavior. We need to monitor and evaluate our cognition so that we can adapt our behavior when necessary. Metacognition consists of two main elements: metacognitive knowledge and online awareness. Online awareness, in turn, also consists of two elements: anticipation of performance and error recognition. Research into the interplay between these elements is currently lacking. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to explore how these different elements are related to each other. Healthy participants filled out the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory with two subscales that serve as measures of metacognitive knowledge. Next, as measures of online awareness, they performed a memory task and an abstract reasoning task (that were adapted to include trial-by-trial confidence judgments), and made pro- and retrospective confidence judgments about their performance on these tasks. The 128 included participants show a large variability in scores on all the different metacognitive measures. Better knowledge of cognition was associated with better regulation of cognition (r(126)=.656, p<.001). On the memory task, better metacognitive sensitivity was associated with worse anticipation of performance (r(126)=.261, p=.003) but better evaluation of performance (r(126)=-.247, p=.005). On the abstract reasoning task, better anticipation of performance was associated with better evaluation of performance (r(126)=.266, p=.002). The current study confirms that metacognition is a multidimensional concept consisting of different elements that are associated with, but not equivalent to, each other. This knowledge is important for improving goal-directed behavior, which can be disturbed after, for example, brain damage.