Chapter 10 - Monitoring, metacognition, and executive function: Elucidating the role of self-reflection in the development of self-regulation

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Abstract

While an abundance of research has investigated the development of the automatic and controlled processes through which individuals control their thoughts, emotions, and actions, less research has emphasized the role of the self in self-regulation. This chapter synthesizes four literatures that have examined the mechanisms through which the individual acts in a managerial role, evaluating the current status of the system and initiating regulatory actions as necessary. Taken together, these literatures (on executive function, error monitoring, metacognition, and uncertainty monitoring) suggest that self-reflection plays a critical role in self-regulation, and that developmental improvements in self-reflection (via increasing levels of conscious awareness and enhanced calibration of monitoring systems) may serve as driving forces underlying developmental improvement (and temperamental individual differences) in children's ability to control their thoughts and actions.

Introduction

The development of self-regulation has long been a focus of developmental research. From early observations by Piaget and Vygotsky through contemporary behavioral and neuroscientific investigations, this line of inquiry provides insight into the genetic, neurophysiological, and behavioral mechanisms underlying the willful control of thought, emotion, and action. Self-regulation frees children from reactive, stimulus-driven patterns of responding, allowing them to plan for their future, maintain optimal levels of emotional reactivity, and act in a manner that is consistent with their higher order goals or standards for behaving. As such, this core capacity has critical implications for emotional well-being, social competence, and academic and professional success (Blair, 2002, Blair and Diamond, 2008, Eisenberg et al., 2010, Moffitt et al., in press).

Accordingly, an extensive body of research has investigated the myriad of automatic and controlled processes that underlie the development of self-regulation (Kochanska et al., 2001, Schneider and Lockl, 2008, Zelazo et al., 2008). Overall, this line of research has revealed that self-regulation begins to emerge in the first few months of life, as children develop basic motor skills allowing them to engage in rudimentary forms of self-soothing (e.g., shifting their gaze from aversive stimuli, seeking proximity to their caregivers; Buss and Goldsmith, 1998, Rothbart et al., 1992). Dramatic improvements in self-regulation occur during early childhood as children become increasingly able to control their thoughts (e.g., Paz-Alonso, Ghetti, Matlen, Anderson, & Bunge, 2009), emotions (e.g., Lewis & Stieben, 2004), and actions (e.g., Zelazo, Müller, Frye, & Marcovitch, 2003). However, self-regulation continues to mature until well into adolescence (Best and Miller, 2010, Lewis et al., 2006, Olson and Luciana, 2008) and probably beyond (e.g., Weintraub et al., 2011). In short, an abundance of research has revealed that clear age-related improvements in the ability to purposefully adjust one's thoughts and behavior are observed in the first two decades of life.

To date, relatively little attention has been directed toward the self aspect of self-regulation, including the self-reflective processes that allow children to evaluate their current (internal and contextual) status and initiate corrective adjustments to their ongoing activity. Just as regulatory agencies cannot enforce laws without actually monitoring whether companies are adhering to them, human self-regulatory systems cannot adequately control their behavior without some degree of awareness of the ongoing operations of the system.

How do children develop the ability to monitor and modify their ongoing thoughts, emotions, and actions? The aim of this chapter is to provide an integrative review of four diverse literatures (on executive function (EF), metacognition, uncertainty monitoring, and error monitoring) that are beginning to converge on this question and that collectively provide some promising answers to it.

Before proceeding, we note that self-regulation encompasses a broad range of automatic and controlled processes (Lewis & Todd, 2007). Our primary focus will be the development of the latter. However, age-related changes and individual differences in automatic processes likely interact with more controlled operations to yield self-regulation, as discussed in later sections of this chapter. We also note that the terms self-monitoring and self-regulation are used here as functional constructs. That is to say, these and related terms (see Table I for a list of key constructs) are intended to describe the processes that make it possible for individuals to track and adjust their behavior (e.g., Zelazo et al., 2008), and not as the operations of a homunculus or neural module.

Section snippets

Four Literatures Investigating the Development of Self-Regulation

The question of how children acquire the ability to purposefully control their thoughts and actions has received considerable attention in recent years, in part due to the well-documented importance of self-regulation for daily functioning and long-term interpersonal, academic, and professional success (Blair, 2002, Blair and Diamond, 2008, Eisenberg et al., 2010, Manly et al., 2002, Moffitt et al., in press). Given that self-regulation involves a highly complex array of processes, different

Integrating Disparate Literatures

Although these four lines of research have progressed relatively independently of one another, research on EF, error monitoring, metacognition, and uncertainty monitoring (summarized in Table I) shares several common grounds. The processes of interest appear to be supported by overlapping neural substrates in medial PFC, including ACC and insula (Fernandez-Duque et al., 2000, Holroyd and Coles, 2002, Lahat et al., 2010, Lamm et al., 2006, Shimamura, 2000). Investigations rely on overlapping

The Role of Self-Reflection in the Development of Self-Regulation

Taken together, these literatures suggest that developmental improvement in self-regulation arises from two sources: (a) age-related improvements in self-reflective awareness, and (b) age-related improvements in the ability to translate information gleaned from self-reflection into appropriate behavioral adjustments. Both of these are likely multifaceted processes occurring at various levels of conscious awareness.

Dynamic Interactions Between Automatic and Controlled Processes in Self-Regulation

In addition to striking developmental differences in self-regulation, longitudinal research suggests that individual differences in EF and aspects of temperament related to self-regulation are relatively stable over childhood (e.g., Carlson et al., 2004, Kochanska et al., 2000), raising the intriguing question of why some individuals are better at controlling themselves than are others. In part, this may arise from relatively stable differences in children's environments. For example, recent

Conclusions

Over the course of childhood and adolescence, individuals become increasingly responsible for, and increasingly capable of, regulating their own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Converging evidence from diverse literatures on monitoring, EF, and metacognition suggest that age-related improvements in children's ability to willfully alter their patterns of thought and action may be critically dependent upon age-related improvements in self-reflective awareness and the corresponding deliberate

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