#metacognition

#metacognition

This process, becoming aware of something not working and then changing what you're doing, is the essence of metacognition, or thinking about thinking. It's your brain monitoring its own thinking, recognizing a problem, and controlling or adjusting your approach. In fact, metacognition is fundamental to human intelligence and, until recently, has been understudied in artificial intelligence systems. My colleagues Charles Courchaine, Hefei Qiu, Joshua Iacoboni, and I are working to change that.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly praised for making us sharper, faster, and more productive. From drafting text to solving complex reasoning problems, tools like ChatGPT promise cognitive augmentation at scale. Yet a growing body of psychological research suggests that something subtler, and potentially more consequential, is happening alongside these gains. AI may be improving what we do while quietly distorting how well we understand our own competence.

Stress tolerance is a key executive function skill that relates to our ability to cope with pressure, uncertainty, and change. Stress tolerance involves being able to navigate incoming demands and manage stressful situations. For some of us, this is a significant strength, and we may find that we thrive in uncertain, novel, and changing environments. For others, atypical circumstances can be very stressful (Dawson and Guare, 2016).

I remember working on my book and catching myself mid-paragraph. I'd just finished a sentence that felt particularly satisfying to write and paused to ask: Why does this feel so good? The answer wasn't flattering. What I'd written sounded smart, but it wasn't clear. I realized I'd been unconsciously filtering ideas through "does this make me look clever?" instead of "will this help the reader?"

For almost five years, I've been dutifully drawing little green dots at the top of my journal entries. A small green dot means it was a generally good day, a slightly bigger one that it was pretty fantastic. A huge one represents one of the handful of no-notes, absolutely perfect days of the year. Orange dots equal stress, red denotes anger, and blue means feeling blue.

Children who practice metacognition learn to analyze tasks and estimate their own effectiveness.

Critical thinking is a process of thinking about thinking through purposeful, self-regulated judgment.