Young Children Bet on Their Numerical Skills: Metacognition in the Numerical Domain. (September 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vo, Vy A.; Li, Rosa; Kornell, Nate; Pouget, Alexandre; Cantlon, Jessica F.
• Is Part Of: Psychological science. Volume 25:Number 9(2014:Sep.)
• Page Start: 1712
• Page End: 1721
• Publication Date: 2014-09
• Subjects: cognition -- metacognition -- childhood development -- cognitive development -- mathematical ability -- number comprehension; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797614538458
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0956-7976

Abstract

Metacognition, the ability to assess one's own knowledge, has been targeted as a critical learning mechanism in mathematics education. Yet the early childhood origins of metacognition have proven difficult to study. Using a novel nonverbal task and a comprehensive set of metacognitive measures, we provided the strongest evidence to date that young children are metacognitive. We showed that children as young as 5 years made metacognitive "bets" on their numerical discriminations in a wagering task. However, contrary to previous reports from adults, our results showed that children's metacognition is domain specific: Their metacognition in the numerical domain was unrelated to their metacognition in another domain (emotion discrimination). Moreover, children's metacognitive ability in only the numerical domain predicted their school-based mathematics knowledge. The data provide novel evidence that metacognition is a fundamental, domain-dependent cognitive ability in children. The findings have implications for theories of uncertainty and reveal new avenues for training metacognition in children.