Chapter 10 - Monitoring, metacognition, and executive function: Elucidating the role of self-reflection in the development of self-regulation
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
References (155)
- et al.
Intolerance of uncertainty: Exploring its dimensionality and associations with need for cognitive closure, psychopathology, and personality
Journal of Anxiety Disorders
(2008) - et al.
Executive functions after age 5: Changes and correlates
Developmental Review
(2009) - et al.
Inhibitory control and emotion regulation in preschool children
Cognitive Development
(2007) - et al.
Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years: Evidence from manipulations of memory, inhibition, and task switching
Neuropsychologia. Special issue: Advances in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
(2006) - et al.
Is perseveration caused by inhibition failure? Evidence from preschool children's inferences about word meanings
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(2003) - et al.
Executive attention and metacognitive regulation
Consciousness and Cognition
(2000) - et al.
Dissociable executive functions in the dynamic control of behavior: Inhibition, error detection, and correction
Neuroimage
(2002) - et al.
The development of metamemory monitoring during retrieval: The case of memory strength and memory absence
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
(2008) - et al.
Source localization (LORETA) of the error-related negativity (ERN/Ne) and positivity (Pe)
Cognitive Brain Research
(2004) - et al.
Age-related change in executive function: Developmental trends and a latent variable analysis
Neuropsychologia. Special issue: Advances in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
(2006)
The feeling of knowing: Some metatheoretical implications for consciousness and control
Consciousness and Cognition
The credibility of children's testimony: Can children control the accuracy of their memory reports?
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
The effects of encoding fluency and retrieval fluency on judgments of learning
Journal of Memory and Language
Neural correlates of cognitive control in childhood and adolescence: Disentangling the contributions of age and executive function
Neuropsychologia
The self-regulating brain: Cortical-subcortical feedback and the development of intelligent action
Cognitive Development
Rehabilitation of executive function: Facilitation of effective goal management on complex tasks using periodic auditory alerts
Neuropsychologia
A history of childhood behavioral inhibition and enhanced response monitoring in adolescence are linked to clinical anxiety
Biological Psychiatry
Processes in delay of gratification
The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis
Cognitive Psychology
Metamemory: A theoretical framework and new findings
The Psychology of Learning and Motivation
Mirror self-image reactions before age two
Developmental Biology
Development of executive functions through late childhood and adolescence in an Australian sample
Developmental Neuropsychology
Three-year-old children can access their own memory to guide responses on a visual matching task
Developmental Science
White matter development during childhood and adolescence: A cross-sectional diffusion tensor imaging study
Cerebral Cortex
The mismeasure of memory: When retrieval fluency is misleading as a metamnemonic index
Journal of Experimental Psychology. General
From external regulation to self-regulation: Early parenting precursors of young children's executive functioning
Child Development
A developmental perspective on executive function
Child Development
School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological conceptualization of children's functioning at school entry
The American Psychologist
An optimal balance: The integration of emotion and cognition in context
Biological processes in prevention and intervention: The promotion of self-regulation as a means of preventing school failure
Development and Psychopathology. Special Issue: Integrating Biological Measures into the Design and Evaluation of Preventive Interventions
Development of the adolescent brain: Implications for executive function and social cognition
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
I know I know it, I know I saw it: The stability of overconfidence across domains
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Applied
A brain-based account of the development of rule use in childhood
Current Directions in Psychological Science
Fear and anger regulation in infancy: Effects on the temporal dynamics of affective expression
Child Development
Developmentally sensitive measures of executive function in preschool children
Developmental Neuropsychology
Executive function and theory of mind: Stability and prediction from ages 2 to 3
Developmental Psychology
Individual differences in inhibitory control and children's theory of mind
Child Development
Anterior cingulate cortex and conflict detection: An update of the theory and data
Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience
Children's questions: A mechanism for cognitive development
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body
Nature Reviews. Neuroscience
How do you feel—Now? The anterior insula and human awareness
Nature Reviews. Neuroscience
Development of decision making in school-aged children and adolescents: Evidence from heart rate and skin conductance analysis
Child Development
Preschoolers’ memory monitoring: Feeling-of-knowing judgments
Child Development
The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
Development of error monitoring ERPs in adolescents
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
The performance of human infants on a measure of frontal cortex function, the delayed response task
Developmental Psychobiology
Unconscious knowledge of artificial grammars is applied strategically
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
What sort of representation is conscious?
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Self-regulation and school readiness
Early Education and Development
Developmental differences in learning and error processing: Evidence from ERPs
Psychophysiology
Cited by (85)
Metamotivation in medical education: The 4F conceptual framework
2024, Medical TeacherEffect of instruction and experience on students’ learning strategies
2024, Metacognition and LearningUnraveling the Role of (Meta-) Cognitive Functions in Pacing Behavior Development during Adolescence: Planning, Monitoring, and Adaptation
2023, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise