METACOGNITION: THE SCIENCE OF SELF-AWARENESS - Stephen Fleming PHD #63
Sep 15, 2024
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Stephen Fleming, a cognitive neuroscience professor at University College London, dives deep into the intriguing science of self-awareness and metacognition. He discusses how self-awareness evolved and its importance in learning and decision-making. The conversation also touches on cognitive biases, the role of metacognition in social dynamics, and how understanding our own knowledge can enhance collaboration. Fleming explores the implications of AI on self-awareness and whether we should encourage AI to be metacognitive, raising questions about the future of consciousness.
Metacognition, or self-awareness, is crucial for accurately assessing one's knowledge and performance, ultimately impacting learning outcomes.
The interplay between self-awareness and social awareness enhances communication and collaboration, influencing how we interpret others' knowledge and intentions.
The integration of technology in learning poses risks and opportunities, necessitating a balance between leveraging AI and maintaining strong metacognitive skills.
Deep dives
Understanding Metacognition
Metacognition is the process of thinking about one's own thinking and awareness of one's cognitive processes. It involves evaluating one's understanding and knowledge, which can significantly impact learning outcomes. For instance, a student preparing for an exam may mistakenly believe they know a topic well, leading them to stop studying, which ultimately harms their performance. Research in educational psychology has demonstrated that accurate metacognitive assessments throughout the learning journey are critical for success.
Self-Awareness and Cognitive Skills
Self-awareness, an aspect of metacognition, plays a vital role in cognitive abilities and decision-making. Individuals with higher self-awareness can more accurately track their knowledge and performance, which leads to better outcomes in tasks such as problem-solving. Furthermore, the disconnect between someone’s perceived ability and their actual performance can lead to underachievement, highlighting the importance of cultivating strong metacognitive skills. Thus, enhancing self-awareness is a crucial step for personal and academic growth.
Metacognition and Social Dynamics
Metacognition significantly influences social interactions, particularly in understanding others' knowledge and intentions, often referred to as theory of mind. This ability allows individuals to evaluate not only their cognitive processes but also to interpret the thoughts and beliefs of those around them. Emerging evidence suggests that individuals can struggle with self-evaluation when simultaneously assessing others, indicating a shared cognitive resource for both processes. Recognizing the interdependence of self-awareness and social awareness can foster better communication and collaboration.
Neuroscience Insights into Metacognition
Recent neuroscience research reveals that metacognitive processes, including confidence tracking, are not solely confined to the brain's higher-order regions but also engage areas responsible for basic perceptual tasks. This indicates that our ability to reflect on our performance is a complex interplay between various brain regions. Experiments have shown that improved metacognitive capacity correlates with greater accuracy in performance assessments, providing insights into how individuals navigate decision-making. There remains a need for further exploration of these processes in diverse contexts.
Metacognition in Learning and Education
In educational settings, fostering a metacognitive approach can enhance learning. Strategies such as peer teaching encourage students to articulate their understanding, leading to greater awareness of their knowledge gaps. This dynamic fosters a growth mindset, where students engage in reflective practices that promote deeper learning and retention of information. Therefore, integrating metacognitive strategies into pedagogy is vital for developing critical thinkers ready to tackle complex problems.
Implications of Technology on Metacognition
The rise of technology, particularly AI, presents both challenges and opportunities for metacognitive processes. While AI can aid decision-making and enhance learning by offloading cognitive load, it may also risk reducing individuals' engagement in critical thinking. There is a growing concern about overreliance on technology leading to a decline in self-awareness and metacognitive skills, as individuals may become complacent in their cognitive processes. Balancing the use of technology with the cultivation of metacognitive abilities is essential for future success.
How and why did human’s develop self-awareness of what we know and don’t know? How does it develop in relation to how we evaluate what other people know? What are the risks of cognitive bias tainting our ability to learn and self correct?
In this episode, we have the interesting question of our own self-awareness, or Meta-cognition, to understand. For centuries philosophers have called on us to “know thyself”, but only now with the tools of modern neuroscience have we been able to scientifically quantify the way we consciously track our behaviour, performance, thoughts and knowledge. So today we’ll be getting into why this is important for learning and error correction; we’re going to talk about meta-cognition’s use for “mind reading” I.e. tracking our confidence in others in their own knowledge, both friends and foes, fundamental for the evolution of our collaborative groups; the implications of cognitive bias blind spots in metacognition for updating our collective beliefs over time; also whether metacognition is proportionally correlated to intelligence; and how technology and AI has and will influence the future of our self-awareness, and whether it’s convenient to try programming AI to be metacognitive too, or if that would invite disaster.
For these matters there can be no better guest than University College London Cognitive neuroscience Professor, Stephen Fleming. He’s the author of the 2021 book “Know Thyself, the science of self awareness”, and founder of the Meta Cognition Group at UCL, and the group leader of the Max Plank, UCL Centre for Computational Neuroscience.
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro
05:15 Striking aspects of experience get you thinking.
08:00 ‘Know thyself’ - a moral, social and spiritual responsibility
10:00 Lao Tsu - to think you know when you do not is a disease.
11:00 Tracking the quality of our performance, error correction and learning.
14:00 Cognitive offloading - compensating for our limitations.
14:30 Metacognition and intelligence are similar but different.
17:40 Inside-out modelling of the world influences your cognition.
20:45 The brain has confidence in colour - Subjective inflation in the periphery.
22:00 UCL metacognition lab experiments - confidence in performance.
25:20 Metacogntiive efficiency - skill in evaluating your success.
26:20 MRI scans of the processes of self-aware brain activity.
28:50 Sam Harris - Self-awareness in the brain vs Ego-self.
33:20 Mind reading/Theory of mind: Evaluation of others VS evaluation of myself.
38:50 Children’s learning
43:40 Chris Frith - metacognition for collaboration: Balancing our own VS group evaluations.
44:30 Supremacy of collective knowledge
46:45 Why did self-awareness evolve?
51:30 The fight or flight mental state trumps self-reflective evaluation.
54:00 Stress blunts frontal cortex activity.
54:20 Modern life stress is not the same as the stress we evolved for.
57:20 We need self-reflection in stressful arguments but it’s not available.
58:20 Education: re-presenting your ideas - an antidote to over confidence.
01:04:00 Left Brain Interpreter - lack of self-awareness of our cognitive bias.
01:10:00 Exacerbated confidence judgements in internet/social media information ecosystems.
01:14:40 Awareness of the inside out way we construct our view of the world could be positive for compassion.
01:17:10 Balancing long-term societal self awareness, with traditional short term one.
01:21:00 The influence of Ai and technology on our self awareness.
01:26:30 ‘Offloading’ aids for cognition VS replacements for our cognition?
References:
Stephen Fleming, “Know thyself - the science of self-awareness”
Steve Fleming’s Lab - The Meta Lab, UCL
Gilbert Riles, “Concept of Mind” - self awareness in us and others
Peter Carruthers - “Knowledge of our own thoughts is just as interpretive as knowledge of the thoughts of others” paper
Chris D. Frith - ‘The role of metacognition in human social interactions’ paper
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