Part three of the Metacognition quartet
In the last article entitled Metacognition-Lite, we looked at a simplified view of metacognition – a lite version to help us understand how it works coupled with some practical examples of how it can help us.
In this third article in the series, we will look at the complexities of metacognition in a more holistic way as a model to show how it can help us not only with the the basic tasks involved in comprehension and effective learning, but can also help us at a more fundamental level – to change our thinking to remove the emotional and behavioural blocks we manufacture that reduce our effectiveness in pursuing our goals. These blocks may include excessive dependence on the approval and love of others, execessive anger or self-pity, anxiety about change, feelings of low self-worth, and depression.
An holistic model of Metacognition
In the previous article on Metacognition-Lite, we saw that metacognition represents far more than just “thinking about our thinking”. Metacognition really represents an executive function for managing our thoughts as a “factory-line” production process – to produce effective and desired emotional and behavioural outcomes for ourselves.
Metacognitions are also thoughts just like any other – but with intent.
Metacognitions have an end in mind – they are directed towards a goal, and our thoughts, like foot soldiers, should follow orders in order to ensure that the goal is reached.
Now our challenge is to represent this complex concept in simplified model form – in a way that will help us understand and put metacognition into practice as Life Adventurers – to help us become more effective at reaching our goals.
Take a look at the model below.
Let us review the model and see what we can learn from it.
Note that there are various ways to depict these concepts depending on the disciplines involved. This simplified model is designed to help highlight concepts that will help us as Life Adventurers to understand ourselves, act, change, and generally become more effective at being, doing, and becoming.
First we will conduct a general overview of the main process “flows”, and then we will look in more detail at the implications of the model for us as Life Adventurers.
At the top of the model, we can see our existing metacognitive artefacts – the knowledge we have built up about what we know, and the meta-tools at our disposal for managing that knowledge. Our artefacts are used, enriched, and “updated” by our metacognitive processes. We gain more knowledge about what we know, we develop wisdom, or we change our paradigms of how the world really is or how we relate to it. This may lead us to change some of our belief systems, for example.
Metacognitive processes represent the heart of the model. This is the “nerve centre” that CAN takes our real-life goals and events, select and oversee our cognitive processes, keep them on track, evaluates how effectively they are working for us, and help us change our thinking patterns and beliefs where necessary to get better outcomes for ourselves. We say CAN… because this is not an obvious skill – we must firstly understand that we can exercise control over ourselves, and then secondly work at improving this skill.
Looking at the model we can see that our cognitive processes (and in particular the way we think) lead directly to a variety of outcomes – sometimes effective, sometimes less so.
Think about this carefully if it is a new concept for you.
Perhaps you have previously always assumed that your feelings and behaviour were hard-wired…
The Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus summed it up as follows:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.”
In other words, what we think and believe largely determines how we feel and act, NOT what happens to us!
Note the way in which the model identifies different types of thoughts in our cognitive processing of events. Here is a simple example to clarify the differences.
Perception: I see a friend on the street – She walks past me without saying hello.
Inference: She is ignoring me – She doesn’t like me any more!
Evaluation: Its terrible she doesn’t like me – I’m worthless!
Belief: I am worthless without the constant approval of significant people in my life.
Outcomes: Low Self-Worth, Depression, Withdrawal
Perception represents our relatively neutral registration of an event.
Inferences are more subjective – we attempt to decipher what an event signifies. Here there is clearly a lot of room for error and misinterpretation. For example, my friend may not have seen me because she forgot her glasses and cannot see so well.
Evaluations are an answer to the question… what does my inference mean for me? Note how the evaluation is fuelled by a belief about my worth.
Beliefs represent our (often subconscious and automatic) paradigms about the world – the lens through which we determine if events are good or bad for us.
Our evaluations and beliefs are often reflexive, unrealistic, illogical, and unhelpful. Our evaluations (and in particular our beliefs which inform those evaluations) generally represent the most productive area for us to address in order to become more effective.
The outcomes in our example are clearly not effective. We will look at more examples of effective and ineffective thinking in the final article in this series. The important thing to note here is that we can use metacognition to evaluate our thinking at various levels and to change it as necessary to produce better outcomes for ourselves.
Emotional and behavioural outcomes serve as “fuel” – either to reinforce and enrich our current metacognitive artefacts, or to prompt a change in the artefacts or our thinking… when our thinking is not helping us – or is simply proven to be incorrect.
For example, we may decide to work on reducing our difficulty in initiating life change due to extreme anxiety. Such anxiety is a common root-cause preventing us from pursuing potentially fruitful endeavours as Life Adventurers (new careers, new relationships, reasonable risk-taking, etc). This emotion has its roots in our belief system (for example, a common belief is that “I MUST always do my work perfectly”. Such a belief can lead us to avoid change due to the “threat” of possible future “failure”.
Once we understand the link between our thinking and our emotions, we can work to change our outcomes – for example to reduce our anxiety by changing the way we perceive “threats” to our “value”. In subsequent articles we will cover the nature of our ineffective beliefs and how to address them in more detail.
Implications of Metacognition for Life Adventurers
Now let us look in detail at what the model means for us as Life Adventurers.
We have a set of metacognitive artefacts or tools at our disposal with which we can “chisel” and re-structure our thinking processes through time in order to become more effective at achieving our goals.
We can deduce and induce knowledge. We can experiment to test out our thinking.
Is our thinking logical and rational, and realistic?
Is it helping us or hindering us?
We can work on changing our thinking in order to reach long-term strategic goals, to become more effective, and to disturb ourselves less about what happens in the external world (and potentially in our own internal world).
We have the capacity to deliberately act against the “reasoning” of our emotions in order to change those emotions and re-structure the cognitions that cause them.
For example, if we are anxious about speaking in public and avoid it (because, for example, we fear ridicule and devaluation), then what is the solution? The solution is to ignore our emotional reasoning and reduce our fear by doing the thing we fear. We must endure anxiety until it subsides with speaking practice and experience. (In subsequent articles we will investigate the kinds of thinking that lie behind such anxiety, and how we can restructure our beliefs to reduce that anxiety and other ineffective emotions).
This is a classic example of the power of metacognition and the true gift of our “big brains”.
How many other living creatures have the capacity to sit in a chair and reflect, to conceptually review the effectiveness of their cognitive processes, to autonomously decide to think differently, and to consistently go against their own emotional grain in this way for long-term gain?
In other words to temporarily ignore their thinking which says… “This is painful and dangerous. Run away!”
This example also explains the bi-directional flows in our model between cognition and outcomes. Changing our thinking is not a simple linear process. Change works more like waves, ebbing and flowing between events, thinking, outcomes, and metacognition. So although changes in our thinking are important to get more effective outcomes, behavioural changes are also crucial in triggering real changes in the way we think and in re-enforcing them.
We have ammunition in the form of meta-knowledge.
What do we know (or think we know) about our thought processes and those of others? What kinds of options do we have at our disposal for solving tasks and for long-term strategy?
Are our paradigms correct?
For example, if we view the world as a place where external events directly determine our behaviour and emotions, how successful are we likely to be as a Life Adventurers?
How much responsibility are we likely to take for our actions?
How autonomous are we likely to be?
And yet this is how most of us think at least some of the time.
Every day we have choices about whether or not to make ourselves anxious, fly into a rage, or make ourselves depressed… because of the way people treat us or because of poor life conditions, for example.
We have choices about whether to act in self-defeating ways, even though we may not yet have the metacognitive paradigm – the understanding and the framework necessary to see that this is true, and to see the options that are open to us (to embrace positive change despite anxiety, to persevere, and to endure outside of our comfort zones, for example).
Note that the outcomes from our thinking can be emotional and cognitive experiences as well as behavioural.
For example, a prospective public speaker, merely by imagining public speaking can “see himself fail” – and thereby make himself anxious and more likely to avoid a potential speaking engagement. He can think and generate an ineffective emotion and behaviour… without anything visibly happening!
This is a good example of the non-linear and interconnected nature of the relationship between our thoughts, our feelings, and our behaviour. All three aspects can trigger and re-enforce one another, either positively or negatively, but the key to initiating change and gaining autonomy is to change the way we think!
Depression is a good example of a self re-enforcing ineffective emotion, often triggered by thoughts of hopelessness and low self-worth, but then fuelled by a downward behavioural spiral of withdrawal from society, loss of motivation, and an increasingly bleak outlook on life.
It is with good reason that depression is often called a “crisis of the imagination” Part of the solution to depression is to examine and challenge the beliefs helping to maintain the emotional state, and also to act against our emotional reasoning to prove to ourselves that we can find enjoyment in life. Although drugs are often necessary in the armoury against depression, almost all sufferers can benefit to a greater or lesser degree from changing the way they think.
The goals we seek in life may be partly the reduction of our ineffectiveness and distress (anxiety, anger, procrastination, depression, etc), partly to increase our wisdom, and partly more concrete goals such as becoming more successful in our careers, improving our relationships, or spending more time on creative activities that give us energy.
We also have the capacity to change our metacognitive view of the world based on our outcomes, empirical evidence, and our perceived effectiveness in reaching our goals. For example, if we are depressed as in the example above, we can change our paradigm on the causes of the illness… to accept that the way we think is in many cases a major contributory factor to our emotional state. A new paradigm or view of the world can open up new insights and courses of action to ameliorate our ineffective emotions and behaviours.
We can also consciously work to actively acquire new knowledge – to extend the sum total of what we think we know, and the meta-tools at our disposal to manage that knowledge; tools that can be used in the future to learn more, add value to what we already know (transform information into wisdom, for example), and to help us reach our goals.
Summary
To sum up, we now have a much richer and more holistic view of the nature of metacognition and how it can help us to become more effective in removing internal blocks and reaching our goals. Metacognition can help us not just at a practical “surface” level to improve our learning processes, but also at a more fundamental level – to help us to restructure our thinking to feel and act more effectively in pursuit of our life goals, whatever they may be.
In the final part of this quartet of articles, we will clarify exactly how and why metacognition really does hold the key to the life change kingdom.
© Patrick Geever – All rights reserved.
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