Do children know what they know? Metacognitive awareness in preschool children

Abstract

This metacognitive ability of young children is of great interest because of its relation to children's ability to notice and reflect on their own mental states.Since Piaget's early work, young children have been considered as having little or no awareness of their mental activity. Traditionally, there was a belief of a general lack of introspective awareness and that preschoolers show little understanding of cognitive cueing (Gordon and Flavell, 1977). More recent research, however, (Louca-Papaleontiou, Melhuish and Philaretou, 2012; Gonzales, 2015) support the idea that – in contrast to previous theories-preschool children do possess metacognitive awareness and the ability of introspection. This paper tries to review most of the main studies on children's metacognitive awareness (i.e. introspection) and to explain any inconsistencies in their findings.