Thinking about thinking: Practice makes imperfection detectable

Humans can not only think, but they can also think about their own thinking. We can monitor our cognitive processes and we can identify situations when we do not know enough to perform a task perfectly well. Recent research shows that this "metacognitive" monitoring requires working memory capacity and is therefore impaired when other, irrelevant things need to be remembered. With practice, the reliance on working memory can disappear and metacognition can be engaged even when irrelevant things must be remembered.

Source: Psychonomic Society News - June 25, 2015 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news