Reading and Metacognition
Flavell's Model of Cognitive Monitoring (1979)
Cognitive monitoring occurs through the interactions among four components:
- Metacognitive knowledge - a person's stored world knowledge about people; their cognitive tasks, goals and strategies for achieving them; actions; and experiences.
- Metacognitive experiences - a person's awareness of his or her cognitive or affective processes; and whether progress is being made toward the goal of a current process.
- Metacognitive experiences can ...
- add to, delete from, or revise a person's metacognitive knowledge.
- cause a person to abandon goals and establish news ones
- lead to the activation of cognitive and metacognitive strategies
- Metacognitive experiences can ...
- Goals
- Strategies
Nelson and Narens (1990)
Mental processes are split into two or more specifically interrelated levels
- A COGNITIVE level
- A METACOGNITIVE level that contains a dynamic model of the cognitive level
There are two dominance relations:
- MONITORING - The metacognitive level is INFORMED by the cognitive level
- CONTROL - The metacognitive level MODIFIES the cognitive level
Hacker (2004)
Interplay between two mechanisms:
- MONITORING - information regarding the status of knowledge or strategies at a cognitive level is provided to a corresponding metacognitive level (Monitoring strategies include rereading a difficult passage, looking back to prior text, predicting upcoming information, comparing two or more propositions)
- CONTROL - understanding at a metacognitive level is used to influence thought at a corresponding cognitive level (Control strategies include summarizing text information, clarifying text information by using reference sources external to the text, correcting incomplete or inaccurate text information)
Overcoming constraints on self-regulated comprehension through DIALOGUE:
- Metacognition represents a CLOSED SYSTEM in which only SUBJECTIVE STANDARDS are applied
- Readers should be encouraged to use not only subjective standards but OBJECTIVE STANDARDS as well. This can be done through
- Through consulting SECONDARY SOURCES in which interpretations of the primary source are provided
- Through DIALOGUE with other readers, which encourages
- active construction of knowledge though culturally meaningful activities
- generation of questions to guide comprehension
- reflection on the progress of learning throughout the learning event (Daiute and Dalton, 1993)
- internalization of dialogue into one's cognitive system, which can provide additional bases on which to direct future self-regulated comprehension (cf Vygotsky, 1978)
References
Daiute and Dalton, 1993. Collaboration between children learning to write: Can novices be masters?
Flavell, 1979. Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive-developmental inquiry.
Hacker, 2004. Self-regulated comprehension during normal reading.
Nelson and Narens, 1990. Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings.
Vygotsky, 1978. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.