Episode 44: Joelle Proust discusses metacognition
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast ordinarily recorded at the University of Chicago, but which today is being brought to you from Amsterdam. With me is Joël Proust, professor at the Ecole de Mar Supérieure and a member of the Jean Nicot Institute in Paris. And she is here to discuss metacognition. Joël Proust, welcome.
Thank you.
So the obvious topic to begin with I think is what does the term metacognition refer to?
Well metacognition has actually two meanings depending on who is using it. The term as used in psychology means the self evaluation of one's own dispositions in a given cognitive task. For example, how well do I remember this name? Should I try to retrieve it or should I quit the idea because I don't have it in memory? This is a A self evaluative capacity. In the other sense of the term it means a mind reading ability, the ability to refer to one's own mental states and to describe them, to attribute them to oneself or to others. So there is a distinction in the use of the terms as to whether it's directed to the self, as is the case for metacognition in the psychological sense or Or whether it's directed to self or others, as it is the case for mind reading.
And just to clarify, by mind reading, we don't mean anything like extrasensory perception, but rather this uh faculty that humans have to recognize, for example, the emotional states of other people or you know, when I look at somebody just by looking at their face I can tell whether they're happy or sad or many things about what they're thinking.
Yes, mind reading is a standard word that has replaced uh the former term of theory of mind that was previously applied to characterize this ability we have as humans to attribute mental states to others and to ourselves based on mental concepts such as belief, desire, intention. These concepts of course need to be mastered and so this Capacity doesn't emerge until an age that is approximately five year olds, but still needs to be fine tuned and appears better in older children. So this ability is currently under a investigation with people now finding mind reading present in very young children like you know one year, one year and a half old seem to be sensitive to what others have seen or what they want.
But this is currently much debated because the cues that are involved in recognizing others' intentions and desires might be behavioural and lead the child make behavioural predictions rather than help him to predict mental states or explain others in terms of mental states.
So maybe we'll go back to the example you just mentioned, um, trying to remember a word. So I'm describing to you the color of the curtains in the room and I'm trying to remember the word crimson and I can't remember it. I'm thinking, ah, what's that word? Uh it's it's like red but it's not red. What uh it's on the tip of my tongue, what is it? Oh, yes, it's crimson. So at the moment when I'm thinking to myself, Ah, what is this word that I can't remember? I'm evaluating my own ability to remember things. And that's a paradigm case of metacognition. When you're when you're assessing how good you are at doing some sort of cognitive activity.
Yes, when you conduct a cognitive activity you need to First know whether you'll be able to conduct it. And when you have finally conducted it, you need to know whether the output is what you were expecting, whether it's the correct one or not. So these are the two steps where metacognition steps in when you try to do things with your mind. So it applies to perception. When you discriminate two things, you must first evaluate Evaluate whether you can do this, whether there is to you a difference between the two items that you need to discriminate. And once you have conducted your discrimination, you must also evaluate whether you are satisfied with your answer.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:41
2
What is metacognition and how is it defined in psychology?
6:41–12:47
3
How does the concept of mind‑reading differ from ordinary self‑evaluation?
12:47–24:41
4
What is the “crimson” word‑tip‑of‑the‑tongue example and why does it illustrate metacognition?
24:41–28:25
5
What are the two key steps of metacognition when performing a cognitive task?
28:25–33:54
Speakers
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