This is the fifth in a series of blogposts on Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III & Mark A. McDaniel’s seminal book on the science of learning

Psychological Obstacles to Metacognition

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2025-01-08 14:00:06

This is the fifth in a series of blogposts on Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III & Mark A. McDaniel’s seminal book on the science of learning, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Harvard University Press, 2014). This week focuses on the fifth chapter, ‘Illusions of Knowing’. For our blogposts on previous chapters, see our blog. Several of the key terms discussed in what follows are defined in those blogposts.

This chapter focuses on metacognition: knowledge of our own cognitive processes. The chapter concerns our awareness of what we do and do not know, and what we have and have not learned. It discusses psychological obstacles that stand in the way of effective metacognition, such as perceptual illusions, cognitive biases and distortions of memory to which all human beings are susceptible. These can be particularly problematic in learning, especially in our assessments of our own learning and knowledge.

The authors call such obstacles ‘illusions of knowing’ or ‘knowledge illusions’: cognitive illusions where we believe that we know or have learned more than we know or have learned, which can be brought about through engaging in ineffective learning strategies which produce such beliefs. Knowledge illusions are examples of poor metacognition (pp. 15-16). The authors offer suggestions on how to avoid such illusions, or at least diminish their force (pp. 125-7).