The development of earlier and later forms of metacognitive abilities: reflections on agency and ignorance

Abstract

Metacognition encompasses both ‘metacognitive knowledge’, that is, knowledge about our own mind, and ‘metacognitive regulation’, that is, the regulation of one’s cognitive activities (Moses and Baird 1999). This chapter focuses on the development of metacognitive knowledge. First, the chapter concentrates on a rather early form of metacognitive knowledge, children’s ‘sense of agency’. Then, the chapter elaborates on later developments in children’s ‘knowing about knowing’. The empirical evidence in both these domains of metacognition leads us to distinguish thoroughly between pre-reflective and reflective forms of metacognition (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008). Only with this distinction the chapter may be able to resolve the many discrepancies found in the literature.