Four-to-six-year-olds’ developing metacognition and its association with learning outcomes
Recent research that I have covered here strongly reinforces the notion that immunization against cognitive decline caused by use of LLMs to brainstorm and write starts with metacognition -- self-awareness of one's own thinking.
Ample recent scientific evidence reinforces the practice of encouraging "thinking about thinking" in very young children with prompts such as "what is your plan?" "what did you notice?" "what went wrong?" "how can you fix it?" Metacognition skills in young children are linked with attention skills (increasingly important now that social media financially reward media that use cognitive and perceptual tricks to increase attention capture and maintenance) and self-regulated learning:
Metacognition is the ability to monitor and calibrate one’s cognitive processes. Prior studies have linked metacognition with learning outcomes; however, very limited research has examined young children’s metacognition. This study aims to investigate young children’s developing metacognition and its relation to their learning outcomes.
Another study emphasizes the importance and learning outcomes of metacognition awareness among children 4-6:
Results indicated that metacognition improved with age during early childhood, showing a larger increase between ages 5 and 6 compared to ages 4 and 5. Children’s metacognition scores did not differ significantly between boys and girls. Regression analysis showed that metacognition scores were significantly related to learning outcomes measured as the sum scores of language and mathematics assessments, controlling for children’s age.
Discussion:
Our study suggests that children who can effectively monitor and adjust their cognitive processes tend to have better academic outcomes, even at a very young age. Our finding indicates the importance of supporting children’s metacognitive skills, alongside traditional academic domains, to enhance overall learning outcomes.
Another study promotes the inclusion of metacognition training in school curriculum and links to additional resources regarding metacognitive learning, strategies, scaffolding, practices, including a starter kit and compendium of practitioner tools:
Teachers can use metacognitive and self-regulatory approaches to support pupils to think about learning more explicitly. Often, this is by teaching them specific strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating their learning.
Metacognition and self-regulation strategies appear to be more effective when embedded in a school’s curriculum and a specific subject lesson.
For parents, teachers, and other caregivers, metacognition training can start with adult modeling by "thinking aloud": "how can I make this lego tower more stable?" "I think I will try..." "That didn't work. I wonder if trying this will work?" "Why didn''t that work?"