THEORETICAL REVIEW
How often are thoughts metacognitive? Findings from research
on self-regulated learning, think-aloud protocols, and mind-wandering
Megan L. Jordano
1
&
Dayna R. Touron
1
Published online: 31 May 2018
#
Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2018
Abstract
Metacognitive monitoring refers to how people evaluate their cognitive performance. An extensive literature examines how
accurately individuals engage in monitoring. The question of how often individuals engage in metacognitive monitoring has been
largely neglected, although one might expect situational, group, and individual variability in monitoring frequency. We argue that
this is a critical omission, given that the frequency of metacognitive monitoring might have important implications for monitoring
accuracy and task performance. Within this review, we highlight findings from three literatures, that each provide insight into
how often individuals engage in monitoring. To clarify the important links and potential overlaps between these separate bodies
of research, we begin by summarizing the metacognitive monitoring literature, including age-related patterns in monitoring
accuracy. We then connect these questions regarding spontaneous monitoring, including age-related patterns in spontaneous
monitoring, to targeted reviews of the self-regulated learning, think-aloud protocol, and mind-wandering literatures. We discuss
situational and dispositional factors believed to influence monitoring accuracy, and propose that the same factors could poten-
tially influence the frequency of spontaneous monitoring. Additionally, we propose that age-related increases in spontaneous
monitoring (as suggested by age-related increases in TRI) may contribute to older adults’ intact monitoring abilities. It is our hope
that this review will encourage increased attention and research on the topic of spontaneous monitoring.
Keywords metacognition
.
mind wandering
.
cognitive aging
.
monitoring
Introduction
Imagine you are sitting down to read a lengthy and compli-
cated scientific article. It is important that you understand and
can later remember the information it contains. As you read
through the dense article, you find yourself engaging in extra-
neous thoughts. You might realize you are getting distracted
by noises in your environment and stop reading until you
relocate to a quieter place. Or perhaps you periodically quiz
yourself on what you had just read. If you find your compre-
hension lacking, you may re-read a critical section. These are
just some examples of metacognition, or thoughts one has
regarding their own cognitive processes (Flavell, 1979).
Three distinct yet inter-related aspects of metacognition
include knowledge, control, and monitoring. Metacognitive
knowledge refers to a person’s understanding and beliefs
about cognition. Metacognitive control refers to regulating
one’s ongoing cognitive activities. Metacognitive monitoring
refers to various thoughts people have regarding their ongoing
task performance or progress. Metacognitive thoughts about
one’s task knowledge, performance, and approach are expect-
ed to occur with varying frequency in everyday life, but the
question of how frequently individuals engage in
metacognitive thoughts has been largely neglected within
the study of metacognition.
In this review, we discuss the importance of studying the
frequency of individuals’ metacognitive thoughts, with the
goal of increasing attention and future research on the issue.
The specific focus of this paper considers the frequency of
metacognitive monitoring, or thoughts regarding task
performance. An extensive literature has examined
metacognitive monitoring, generally focusing on whether in-
dividuals’ judgments about their task performance accurately
reflect how well they are actually performing, and which
* Dayna R. Touron
d_touron@uncg.edu
1
Department of Psychology, The University of North Carolina at
Greensboro, 296 Eberhart Bldg., PO Box 26170,
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (2018) 25:1269–1286
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-018-1490-1
@Phil_Robichaud
@deepthiw
@JoseServera