Elsevier

Developmental Review

Volume 45, September 2017, Pages 31-51
Developmental Review

Review
Executive function and metacognition: Towards a unifying framework of cognitive self-regulation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2017.04.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Executive function and metacognition play important roles in cognitive development.

  • Executive function and metacognition follow similar developmental timetables.

  • There are similarities between metacognitive monitoring and error monitoring.

  • The relationship between executive function and metacognition is dynamic.

Abstract

Executive function and metacognition are higher-order cognitive processes that undergo steady improvements throughout childhood. They are highly relevant to daily functioning in various domains, including academic achievement. Both concepts have been intensively researched, but surprisingly little literature has sought to connect them theoretically and empirically. In the present review, I elaborate on the similarities between these concepts from a developmental perspective, including the definitions, developmental timetables, factors that lead to changes over time, and relations to academic achievement and intelligence. Simultaneously, the differences between these two domains of cognitive development are discussed. These include, in particular, the relative neglect of quantifying monitoring within research on executive functions and the disregard for the neuropsychological underpinnings of metacognition. Finally, this paper presents several avenues for future research and proposes a possible unifying framework of cognitive self-regulation that integrates executive function and metacognition and may lead to a better understanding of the emergence of cognitive self-regulation in development.

Introduction

One of the major milestones of a child‘s cognitive development is the ability to intentionally regulate his or her own behavior and thinking. This includes the ability to stop performing an action when asked to do so (e.g., clapping one‘s hands, talking, kicking the ball) and act in a goal-directed manner (e.g., getting out the right utensils for playing a certain game; remembering to do something at a certain time or place; selecting the best-suited strategy for solving a task). Further striking and far-reaching developments—for both the child and those in his/her environment (e.g., parents, teachers)—include the ability to stay focused despite distractions (e.g., going to fetch an object; finishing a task despite decreasing motivation) and to detect and correct errors.

This literature review focuses on so-called “higher-order cognitive processes,” which play an important role in children’s development of self-regulating behavior and mental operations. Such processes include the monitoring, steering, controlling, and adapting of “lower- or first-level information processes,” such as encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. Two different bodies of the literature will be integrated: that focusing on “executive function” (EF) and that on “metacognition” (MC). In a previous brief report, some practically relevant similarities between EF and MC were outlined (Roebers & Feurer, 2016). The current paper aims to provide a more detailed review of the literature and a critical discussion of the avenues for future research. This review has been organized into two major sections: the first addresses the conceptual and theoretical issues related to EF and MC, while the second focuses on the developmental progression of these concepts, as well as their links to other variables and each other. The major aims of the present review are (a) to bring together two distinct bodies of cognitive and developmental literature related to the regulation of behavior and thinking, and (b) to elaborate on the many similarities and few differences between the concepts described therein. It is important to note that this review is not intended to be exhaustive; rather, the content was selected based on its subjective relevance to developmental theory and practice.

Section snippets

Historical background

In 1971, John Flavell introduced the concept of “metamemory,” and from the beginning linked it to developmental psychology. In discussing the potential factors that promote memory development in children, he referred to the concept of metamemory as “monitoring and knowledge of (memory) storage and retrieval operations” (p. 277). The essential aspects of metamemorial knowledge, nowadays commonly referred to as declarative metamemory, were described in detail by Flavell and Wellman (1977), and

Developmental progression in EF and MC

Framed by the above discussion, in the following paragraphs I offer a summary of age-related improvements in EF and MC, with a specific focus on early developmental achievements. Table 1 captures some of this summary. There are a number of well-established measurement tools for EF. For MC, the summary will focus on examples of both very recent creative approaches and long-forgotten paradigms, with the aim of providing insights that could improve our developmental understanding of this concept

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