“When we take a test, we have some idea of how well we’re going to do. When we start a task, we can predict how long it’ll take us to finish it. When we field a question, we can judge whether we need to consult the oracle of Google.”
“We can do all of this because of a skill called metacognition—the ability to reflect upon our own minds, to monitor their degree of certainty, to have knowledge about our knowledge.”
“Now, a new study from Louise Goupil, Margaux Romand-Monnier, and Sid Kouider at Paris Sciences et Lettres Research University suggests that we have this ability from a very early age. Even twenty-month-old infants have some sense of how well they remember the location of a hidden toy, and they’ll ask for help if they’re uncertain.”
“That might not be surprising to you but many previous studies have concluded that preschoolers have terrible metacognition. They’ll claim to know what’s hidden inside a box whose contents are a total mystery. Or they’ll say they’re certain about which of two toys is hidden, when they only have a 50:50 chance of guessing the right answer. At that age, they suck up knowledge at a breakneck pace, but they suck at reflecting on that knowledge. They’re metaignorant, apparently.”
“Not so, says Goupil. She thinks that these early results said more about the experiments than the infants. Perhaps the tasks were just too hard and the children “couldn’t report if they were sure or unsure because they were just confused all the time,” she says. “And maybe they’re bad at talking about their own mental states, but can reflect on their own competencies and knowledge if you ask them to do so non-verbally.””
““They didn’t just constantly ask for help, but only when the task was difficult,” says Uta Frith from University College London, who was not involved in the study. “You can infer from this that they were ‘aware’ that: a) they couldn’t do the task; b) that someone else could do it; c) that that person would be able to tell them how to do it. So it’s a whole lot of useful information that these babies compute.””
“The infants only showed metacognition when they were told they could ask for help. “I would not have predicted that a clue would be necessary,” she says. Perhaps that’s how the skill develops. At 20 months, infants have it but it’s latent, and they need a nudge to use it. Later, they wield metacognition more readily. And after four years, as per earlier studies, they understand what they’re doing enough to talk about it.”
““Our idea is that you have two components of metacognition,” Goupil explains. There’s an implicit component that allows organisms to reflect upon their own mental state, and is also found in other animals. Then there’s an explicit component, which allows us to communicate about our mental states, and that develops over childhood. “The explicit aspects emerge slowly and thoughtfully with verbal instruction, but the implicit aspects are built-in,” says Goupil.”