title: Young children bet on their numerical skills: metacognition in the numerical domain.
abstract: Metacognition, the ability to assess one's own knowledge, has been targeted as a critical learning mechanism in mathematics education. Yet the early childhood origins of metacognition have proven difficult to study. Using a novel nonverbal task and a comprehensive set of metacognitive measures, we provided the strongest evidence to date that young children are metacognitive. We showed that children as young as 5 years made metacognitive "bets" on their numerical discriminations in a wagering task. However, contrary to previous reports from adults, our results showed that children's metacognition is domain specific: Their metacognition in the numerical domain was unrelated to their metacognition in another domain (emotion discrimination). Moreover, children's metacognitive ability in only the numerical domain predicted their school-based mathematics knowledge. The data provide novel evidence that metacognition is a fundamental, domain-dependent cognitive ability in children. The findings have implications for theories of uncertainty and reveal new avenues for training metacognition in children.
authors: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester.
authors: Vy A
authors: VA
authors: Vo
authors: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester.
authors: Rosa
authors: R
authors: Li
authors: Department of Psychology, Williams College.
authors: Nate
authors: N
authors: Kornell
authors: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester Department of Neuroscience, University of Geneva.
authors: Alexandre
authors: A
authors: Pouget
authors: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester jcantlon@bcs.rochester.edu.
authors: Jessica F
authors: JF
authors: Cantlon
mesh_terms: D001076:Aptitude; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D012647:Self-Assessment
keywords: childhood development; cognition; cognitive development; mathematical ability; metacognition; number comprehension