Components of Metacognition

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Metacognition (Furnes & Norman, 2011; Hertzog & Dunlosky, 2011) involves monitoring one’s cognitive processes and adapting them to develop control strategies to achieve a goal. Metacognition can be classified into two components (Flavell, 1979), metacognition knowledge and metacognition regulation. Metacognition knowledge refers to what an individual knows about their own cognitive process, whereas regulation consists of developing the following skills to fine-tune this process of cognition (Schraw, 2001; Jacobs & Paris, 1987),

(i)   Planning; refers to developing appropriate strategies and allocating resources to a task for optimal performance,

(ii)  Monitoring; refers to self-awareness of one’s task performance,

(iii) Evaluation; refers to critically evaluating the outcome with its corresponding strategies (Hertzog & Dunlosky, 2006).

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The principles of cognitive organization, involved in carrying out a task, include, identifying one’s learning styles, gathering and organizing material, setting a schedule, self-monitoring mistakes, evaluating task success, and lastly evaluating the success of learning strategies and fine-tuning them for the future. Research (L. Baker, 2010) suggests that successful individuals depict stronger metacognitive abilities than less successful ones. As the ability to learn requires goal-setting and metacognitive awareness (Ridley et al., 1992), it is supported by the construct of metacognition that gives an individual the ability to selectively study materials of importance to their own field of study, by attempting to eliminate the materials that they already know and successively progress using guided search (Metcalfe, 2009; Plomin et al, 2000).’ The various metacognitive skills are reading psychology, the psychology of search, individual learning preferences, and decision making.

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Psychology of search

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Human beings are referred to as ‘Informavores’ (Dennet, 1991) as they are continuously seeking, gathering and consuming information. With the advent of the world wide web, a flux of information is available, where individual success highly depends on harnessing these processes of ‘information-gathering and sense-making strategies (Pirolli, 1999)’, by employing metacognitive skills.

 

The following components will be studied:

(1) Information architecture

(2) Reading strategies & Online reading, and

(3) Information foraging theory .

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1. Information architecture: Information Architecture (Wurman, 1976) refers to the ‘structuring, organizing, and labeling’ (Rosenfeld & Morville, 2002) information in digital environments by arranging them in relation to each other. The term is inspired by the disciplines of architecture, just as an architect uses form and space to design for human habitation, so does an information architect (Arango, 2011) uses layout principles to guide a user in digital space (Wodtke & Govella, 2011). Wayfinding can be defined as ‘co-ordinated and goal-directed movement through an environment (Montello, 2006). Effective wayfinding allows a user to, find the shortest way to the goal without being prone to errors (Doherty et al., 2008)(Furnas, 1997). While Info. Architecture plays the role of organizing information, a user may be challenged to find relevant information on content-heavy web pages. This is where employing various reading strategies can be applied (Miller & Remington, 2004). 

 

2. Reading strategy & Online reading: Metacognitive reading involves the ability to apply decoding skills and language comprehension to assimilate meaning (Huang et al., 2009). The non-linear nature of online reading imposes an additional monitoring load on the working memory, along with the existing load of constructing meaning. When reading online, skilled readers apply metacognitive strategies to read effectively to reach their goal, as it gives an individual the ability to selectively process material of importance (Metcalfe, 2009).

 

Some of the reading strategies are:

Skimming; reading for the general drift of the passage,

Scanning; reading quickly to find specific information,

Searching; scanning with attention to find the meaning of specific items of interest.

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However, when relevant information is found, receptive and critical strategies are employed for evaluation and thorough comprehension to develop a deeper understanding of the content. Readers, when searching, are exposed to huge amounts of information on the web and apply satisficing strategies of skimming, scanning, and searching to sample texts (Reader & Payne, 2007). On finding relevant data, they then adapt towards receptive and critical reading which requires more energy to absorb the meaning. For efficient reading, the text also plays a significant role on the website’s readability. Findings from research suggest that using appropriate line spacing, the hierarchy of fonts and font styles (Beymer et al, 2008) (Franken et al., 2015) have a significant influence on readability.

 

For a reader, medium line (55 characters per line) (Dyson et al, 2001) supports effective reading and comprehension in the process of skimming, searching, and scanning. Using bulleted lists, justification, and nesting items can make web pages easier to read (Ling & van Schaik, 2006). The use of font types and sizes also affect online readability (Dehaene & Cohen, 2011) highlighting relevant text in bold, using bulleted lists and use of the hierarchy of fonts to distinguish between texts are useful for skimming. It is important to consider these human factors while creating web content that is easy to read.

 

Research evaluating the reading performance of individuals (Baker et al, 2017), shows that though skilled readers efficiently employ metacognition strategies for reading (Furnes & Norman, 2015), readers with lower proficiency are unable to apply these skills effectively and are overwhelmed by the information, thereby failing to assimilate the meaning of the content.

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3. Information foraging theory: In continuation to reading strategies, information foraging theory builds on the idea of picking useful information. It is based on the foundation of human metacognition that aims to direct its potential towards optimization of time and energy (Metcalfe & Jacobs, 2010) and draws a parallel between humans’ ecological and evolutionary food-foraging strategies (Smith & Winterhalder, 1992)(Stephens & Krebs, 1986). It states that human’s built-in ‘foraging’ mechanism aided our ancestors’ search for food and allowed survival by preserving energy only for optimal goals. This theory states that similar to developing adaptive strategies for food forging, human ‘cognitive systems engage in information foraging and exhibit similar adaptive tendencies (Pirolli and Card, 1995).

 

Information foraging theory (Fu & Pirolli, 2007) provides an analysis of the search process and is built on two key components:

(a) Adaptation (Rational) analysis of information foraging problems and, 

(b) A detailed process model called ACT-IF (the Adaptive Control of Thought in Information Foraging).

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The Adaptation (Rational) analysis (Fu & Pirolli, 2007) draws an analogy to hunter’s food foraging behavior, where a user engaged in search process develops

(i)   Information patches, formed by information filtering and defining regions of focus,

(ii)  Information scents (Chi et al., 2001), by identifying the information by its proximity cues,

(iii) Information diets, by making judgments about the selection of one information item with regards to the other.

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The ACT-IF model was a revision of the ACT (Adaptive Control of Thought)(Anderson, 1993). The ACT model theorized that in a search process, a cue activates a (knowledge) node and spreads over the semantic network. In the process of detecting information scent, the ACT-IF model assumes that leading from the task query, the ‘text summaries on the interfaces spread activation’ through the memory of the user. Activation levels evaluate the approaches that can be adopted to implement the ‘rate-optimization heuristics’(Pirolli & Card, 1999). The above theory can be described, considering the case of a web user engaged in the search, he/she will conduct a rational analysis for the search, firstly, will evaluate the situation at hand, then analyse the probable solutions based on past experience, and will further develop a metacognitive strategy to achieve the desired solution to the problem.

 

Thus the user’s navigation choice will be led by information scent and proximal cues that align with the user’s mental model. Information scent will cause ‘spreading activation', which will then prompt the user to evaluate the website and perform a ‘cost-benefit analysis’ (Pirolli, 2005) to assess the benefit of staying or switching to another web page. This understanding can be applied to the behavior of individuals with less domain knowledge or lower cognitive skills (Bhavnani, 2002). It is observed, that when conducting a web search on a content-heavy website if the user cannot detect information scent, he or she may abandon the process altogether.

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Key principles - Designing for Search: When designing web displays for search, the design must consider on top-down processing rather than bottom-up (pre-attentive, focusing on primitive elements and patterns), as the former focuses on user’s expectations and mental models. It would assist the user to locate the information scent and employ foraging behavior to find the required information. This can be assisted by clear information architecture of the web displays and providing easy navigation directed by information scent. The websites should be easy to skim and scan so as to optimize reading behavior for both skilled readers as well as lower proficiency readers. As lower proficiency readers do not exhibit strong metacognitive skills, their special needs must be taken into account to promote learning. Using adequate line spacing, appropriate types of fonts and font sizes, hierarchical text sizes, bold text, leveraging white space to focus on important elements, and using “key-words” on website content (Syed & Collins-Thompson, 2017) that support information foraging would allow the users to navigate closer to their information goal.

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Design Review: Evaluation of Niroga Institute website (Yoga Center)

Niroga Institute is a leading mindfulness and yoga training centre, that offers meditation sessions for schools and is popular for its teacher training programs as well. A typical user of the website would be a person interested in enrolling for their teacher training program. The user’s goal would be to evaluate:

• Various programs offered,

• Course duration,

• Cost,

• Faculty and

• Eligibility criteria

As a new user opens the institute website, the user would see the homepage (Fig.1), with a photograph and a quote (adheres to bottom-up perspective). The user would then locate the top navigation bar, with the heading ‘Trainings’ (Fig.1) with a accordion menu, which will provide an information scent, that all the information regarding training offerings is located here.