Baddeley, Alan. (1996). Exploring the Central Executive.

It took me a good 2-week time to reread this paper five times... including the last time when I took the notes down.

After 2 weeks, what I learned about this paper (and based on what I read in Dr. Baddeley's more recent publications... all the way into 2013) is that it was as he was at a point of trying to figure out whether the central executive should be considered the homunculus or whether it should be fractionated?  It was as if he was at the point of wondering whether the functions of the central executive include components like the coordination and plan-switching of the WM slave systems, the attention controller, and the selection and manipulation of information in Long-Term memory (inhibition and "excitation"?).

In this paper, what he was doing was really "Exploring the central executive"--as stated in the title of the article... and, in the end, he frankly stated that he was not sure yet which way the future might lead... fractionation or not.

I don't know why my head wanted me to drill this paper this hard.  Yet, interestingly, when reading his more recent paper including those targeting the model revision, it put things in a different perspective... the process of becoming of the theory itself.

I like it!

My two cents on Fractionating the CE

Thinking back to my psychotic experiment for my psychotic dissertation... where... I didn't realize till later than I was making people hear voices and see things.  8-X

Given the 99% principle, I am hardly sure about no nothing.  Yet, I am almost 100% confident that the data collection and analysis adhered strictly to the protocol... including the processing of the random assignments of participants to the control and experiment groups (controlling for gender, ESL status)... not to mention the post-experiment interviews... all the way to the last data point collected... right before the Apocalypses kept on coming back like a broken record.

There is something strange about how it worked.  How certain executive function could remain intact (relatively) when the mental status was at the institutionalizable grade.  Sure, towards the hospitalization, I was hallucinating and being "all" delusional as the experiment was taking place... no different from any of my cohorts in the psychiatric ward.

How can psychotics with manageable symptoms perform tasks and hold jobs?  An interesting question.

Perhaps, because of the intact executive functions albeit the dysfunctions in the rest?  Something to support the fractionation notion of the central executive, I guess. 

The following notes are for myself.  Might be too detailed for you... At the same time, how the notions etc in this paper are relevant to psychosis... might need to do it in another post since this one is already too long.


Baddeley, Alan. (1996). Exploring the Central Executive. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 49(1), 5-28.

Strategies for analyzing the central executive

The executive as ragbag

In this section, Baddeley acknowledge the fact that their initial specification of the central executive (CE) was vague and CE is "little more than a ragbag" stuffed with things like strategy selection, planning, retrieval checking.  In 1986, the theorists finally attempted to specify CE in greater details... relying heavily on the Supervisory Activating System (SAS) component of Norman and Shallice's (1980) model of attentional control.

The central executive and the frontal lobes 

Abundant evidence showed that disordered executive control are associated with damages to the frontal lobes (Shallice, 1982, 1988).  While the author regarded highly of the neuropsychological evidence, he also cautioned that if the CE is identified exclusively with frontal function, there is a risk of excluding executive processes because they are not frontally located or considering functions as executive simply because they are based in frontal lobe.

"I shall make extensive use of neuropsychological evidence, much of it from patients who have damage to the frontal lobes, but I do not propose to use anatomical localization as a defining criterion for the central executive."

Although this section is short, it provides us with Baddeley's view on the role of neuropsychological evidence in his theory.

Psychometric approaches to the central executive

Two separate but related lines of research:

1. Traditional concept of intelligence
2. Working memory involves the simultaneous storage and manipulation of material (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974)

The more traditional psychometric approach is based on the assumption that "intelligence measures reflect the operation of a central cognitive processor, which could potentially be identified with the central executive of working memory."

Intelligence... What is intelligence?  An interesting question people have been entertaining since its inception.    Is one one single general capacity that could be captured by Spearman's g, or could it be broken down into subprocesses... and what might these subcomponents entail?  Also, how do the performance on the subcomponents relate to each other?

Reminding me of Dweck... fixed entity or incremental in nature... intelligence.  Since I am definitely getting old, with the synergistic effects of aging, my mental health conditions and the side effects of meds, I would like to subscribe to the fixed notion.  At the same time, since I have lived many a time from 2, 3 words, incremental might serve my ego better. 8-O lol 

The Homunculus: Friend or Foe?

What approach does Baddeley adopt? "...we adopt neither the anatomical nor the classic psychometric approach."

Should CE be considered the homunculus or be fractionated?  Starting from treating it as the homunculus before the evidence tells otherwise... and the path traversed so far...

1. The coordination of the WM slave systems as the function of CE... research on patients with Alzheimer's disease.
2. The link between CE to the SAS system by Norman and Shallice... research on random generation... plain switching
3. CE could act as an attention controller
4. CE's capacity in the selection and manipulation of information in Long-Term memory

The following provides more detailed description on the path traversed mentioned above.

Approaches to fractionating the executive

Following are the areas of research investigating Central Executive (CE).

Dual-task performance

The attempt to devise a measure on Central Executive (CE) stemmed from the intention to study Alzheimer's patient's deficit memory. It was hypothesized that this might reflect the problem of CE in coordinating the slave systems of working memory.

Many a thing we know about stem from what's deviated from the norm.  A good way to message my own already too much in the grandiosity end of ego.

First set of studies: Tracking task plus 1 distraction task: articulartory suppression, reaction time to a tone, digit span.

Dual-task		AD patients vs. Elderly and young controls
Visuospatial	pursuit tracking
Phonological loop (Distraction task)	Articulatory suppression	No significant difference though significant impairment in AD patients reported elsewhere
	Reaction time to tones	significant decrements in speed and accuracy than the control
	Digit span	Significantly decrease in tracking and memory performances in AD patients than the control

Results are consistent with the hypothesis that it might reflect AD patients' problems of CE in coordinating the slave systems of working memory.

Other interpretations:
a. The cost of the peripheral task rather than the issue in coordination

1. Difficulty levels adjusted for all group.  There is no reason to assume the control groups are not devoting all their resources to perform the task.
2. Deficit found in AD patients in this study and others are not found in normal aging.  As some function of WM does appear to decline with age, it supports the notion of fractionating the CE.

b. A reflection of overall deficit such as the notion of general intelligence.

1. The results of dual-task performance did not support this notion given the performance of elderly control.
2. It replaces problems associated with CE with those with intelligence.

Second set of study:

• Varying task difficulties without increasing the demand for dual-task coordination 
• Yntema and Mueser (1960) had shown that the time it takes to categorize a word would increase when there are more categories to select from.
• The category judgment task intended to assess the impact of the number of simultaneously presented categories on the time to decide whether a word belongs to a category.  The participants were asked to decide whether the items they were provided belonged to the target categorie(s).  If the answer is yes, they have to press the key responses on the screen (Guess this is the visiospatial part). There was a-six month interval between the tests during which the disease in the patients have progressed.

Following are factors showing significant results with key pressing the visiospatial task (I think) and categorization the Phonological task:

		Dual-task (modulating difficulty level through the number of categories)
	Var	Correct	misses	correct RT
Time 1	AD patients	Substantial drop between 1 to 2 and 1 to 4 categories	Substantial drop between 1 to 2 categories	Substantial drop between 1 to 2, 2 to 4, and 1 to 4 categories
	Elderly control	ND	No sig difference	deteriorate with increasing numbers of categories.
	Group differences	yes	yes	yes
Time 2	AD patients	Results of two-way ANOVA with repeated measures found AD patients' performance to deteriate significantly over time and their performance to be poorer when the number of categories increase.  However, no significant interaction effect.	Misses increase significantly with the number of category but not significant in test session or the interaction term.	Response time increase significantly with the number of category but not significant in test session or the interaction term.
	Elderly control			Response time increase significantly with the number of category but not significant in test session or the interaction term.

Based on these results, the authors concluded that, though the notion of difficulty level is a tricky one, the increase in task difficulty level will make the task more sensitive to the disease progress.

On the brain side: Executive task might be link with frontal-lobe function.

Disinhibited behaviours: "disturbed attention, increased distractibility, a difficulty in grasping the whole of the complicated state of affairs... while able to work along old routine lines... but cannot learn to master new types of task."

1. Verbal fluency task is associated with left frontal lobe and the executive process of search and retrieval from long-term memory.
2. Wisconsin Card Sorting Test... preservative errors are linked to frontal-lobe damages. 
3. Expert opinions on disinhibited behaviour

"disturbed attention, increased distractibility, a difficulty in grasping the whole of the complicated state of affairs... while able to work along old routine lines... but cannot learn to master new types of task."

This was (hopefully was) so very me... an example... when I was trying to work on the marketing report before first institutionalization.  Something I have to make sure... don't allow myself to progress back to this stage.  Also, no truer words... the failure to select the focus of attention although different (kaputt) executive processes might differentially associated with overt behavior problems or symptomatology isn't etiology though they could be related.  At the same time, albeit the differential physiological basis, there might be similarities in how the dysfunctions come about.  Something interesting though... everything was dedicated to psychotic processing... though there was still some behavioral control since I didn't yell at all passersby crossing my path.

The study was conducted using the computerized tracking task and found that patients with or without disinhibited behaviours do not different in their performance in verbal fluency or Wisconsin Card Sorting performance.  However, those with behavior disorder demonstrated clear decrease in performance in the dual task condition where the box-crossing and digit span tasks were combined.  The results was similar to that of Alderman where patients failing to benefit from the token economy system had more problems with the dual-task test than with standard "frontal" tests.  Both pointed to the association between poor dual-task performance and behavioral problems.

Methodological and assessment issues: Inconsistencies in existing dual-task research led to the question of how to combine tasks and calculate the performance score.

The concluding words of the author about lessons learned from the dual task research is that "the capacity to carry out two tasks simultaneously appears to be a candidate for one separable feature of executive function"  although more research needed.

As for the quote on "the capacity to carry out..."... There are times when things are within our control, in this kind of condition, if multitasking is impossible, let go of it as the trade-off of functionality... till... maybe... one day, you can work with music in the background.

Coordination: I definitely have problems coordinating multiple tasks, starting from coordinating between my psychotic and non-psychotic kinda thing.  Worst off, after the accident, my already not so well-endowed department sensory motor coordination became even more kaputt with the even the body doesn't quite pay me no mind either. 8-O lol

Multitask: Multitasking is especially difficult when the condition is bad.. More exactly, only one default task is set to be performed--psychotic processing.

Random generation

Encoding is hard.  Alright... never promise you a rose garden.  Yet, the good news is... if you are careful about what you encode.... retrieval seems to be a process close to automatic--the limited role of the attentional process in retrieval. Interesting notion I came across here---random generation as a manifestation of knowledge retrieval.

Results of studies on random generation of letters and studies where random generation was combined with a card-sorting task were consistent with the notion that the process of random generation was dependent on a system with limited capacity-- the faster the rate, the less random the output, and the larger the pool of selection, the slower the generation rate.

The author found Norman and Shallice's (1980) model to be of great help in explaining the aforementioned research.  Norman and Shallice's model posited two sources of control of actions: the schemata (learned habits that might have reached automaticity) and the Supervisory Attentional System (SAS: an attentional system capable of overriding habitual behaviors and initiate new ones).

From this viewpoint:
Random generation of letters for instance involves:

• Schemata: Generation is the manifestation of the habitual letter-retrieval schemata at work
• SAS: SAS makes the generation random by constantly breaking up the stereotyped sequence in the schemata.

Combined with card-sorting

• SAS: SAS is also required when sorting cards into different categories

Disruption of CE operation

Shiffrin and Schneider's (1977) notion of automaticity comes handy here with automaticity referring the state when stimulus will get response invoked... not need for the attentional demands.

From this viewpoint:
Random generation is the opposite of automaticity where the goal of the task is to minimize the association of what's to be generated with what got generated before.

Informed by these theoretical notions, the author wanted to know what random generation can tell us about the limited capacity executive system through a studying combining random generation through keypressing with performance on a memory span task (recalling sequences ranging from the length of 1 to 8 items).  The study hypothesized that: "If performance depends upon a general purpose system, then there should be interference between the verbal memory task and the visuo-spatial generation task. Furthermore, if the system reflects a limited-capacity working memory, then the degree of disruption of random generation should increase with concurrent memory load."

Random generation competes for the same limited capacity as is necessary for performance of tasks depending more on the functioning of central executive.

1. Articulatory suppression (counting 1 to 6) had no significant effect on random generation.
2. Category generation significantly disrupted the performance on random generation
3. Verbal fluency seems to depend heavily on executive resources (susceptibility to concurrent digit span)
4. impairments of patients with dysexecutive syndrome
5. Patients' impairment to perform AH3, a test of fluid intelligence, which can be considered as an index of executive function and depending on the functionality of frontal lobes (Duncan, 1993).

Yet, in the dual-task condition where keypressing and number generation is combined, participants seemed to have performed well with concurrent digit generation, category generation, and holding a sequence of digits of span length had similar impact on the randomness of keypressing.  Yet, asymmetrical interferences observed because concurrent keypressing was found to have less impact on digit generation.

Physical ability developed before numerical?

A model similar to Roediger's (1993) simpler retrieval version  of SAM model (Raijmakers and Shiffrin, 1981) was proposed to explain the processes underlying random generation.  The model involves setting up a retrieval plan, running it, checking for suitable randomness, and generate output at the appropriate time if passing the randomness check.

• Time-limit imposes issues in the switching of retrieval plans.
• No time limit: Subjects should be able to switch plans all the time and there's no need to check randomness.
• Repeated use of the same plan will result in stereotyped and non-random responses.
• Interference with plan switching will increase redundancy

What the plan switching notion would, thus, predict a general reduction in randomness rather than catastrophic breakdown when the plans can be operate simultaneously (e.g., keypressing and digit generation).

Testing the switching hypothesis

Trails test from the Halstead-Reitan battery: joining numbered squared (Trails A) and alternating between lettered and numbered squared when connecting the squared A-1-B-2-C-3 (Trails B).  Patients with frontal-lobe damages seems to have problems with the alternating task.

Since you can't make people do the keypressing task and do the Trails test at the same time, the verbal equivalent of the Trails test was used in the study.
Study 1
Keypressing alone or with a concurrent task

1. Reciting alphabets: no
2. Counting digits: no 
3. Verbal equivalence of Trails B "A-1-B-2-C-3": detectable effect on the randomness of keypressing

Study 2
Verbal equIvalence of Trails B starting from F-9 (F-9-G-10-H-11-I-12...) caused disruption in keypressing performance and the task itself was disrupted as well.

The authors concluded from results of these studies that the random generation's demand to constantly switching retrieval plans might be what disrupt the operation of CE... though more research needed.

Issues to be addressed... how does random generation assert its influence?

• the need to switch plans?
• the problem to access plans?
• the monitoring of outputs?

Moi, get done with the need to switch... manually insert the new default to acounteract the biological defects.

Baddeley et all (1984): a degree of automaticity in the retrieval process.

Automaticity? Drill, drill, and drill.

Craik (1995): RT task and word retrieval.... RT was not affected by whether subjects were instructed to focus principally on retrieval or RT. Based on the study results, Craik suggests that learning depends on the available attention, retrieval depends on the operation of the retrieval mode.  Also, encoding is more associated with the left frontal lobe while retrieval, right frontal lobe.

You just be damn sure that you get the right stuffs encoded.

Selective Attention

Selective attention--one more plausible component of CE... the ability to attend to something while discarding the others.

Unfortunately, results of existing research on the impact of aging are inconsistent and make it difficult to come up with a cogent hypothesis about how it really works.

The problem of conducting theoretically driven studies on aging is that almost everything eventually decline with age somewhat.  When the elderly performed poorly on a task, it's difficult to know exactly underlines the observed performance unless all possible factors can be ruled out.

Research on aging deficit using single measure

1. General intelligence (Rabbitt, 1983)
2. Speed of processing (Salthouse, 1991)
3. Reduced capacity for inhibition (Hasher & Zacks, 1988)

Study:
After partialing out the effects of general intelligence and speed of process, try to figure out whether there are additional factors impacting the participants' performance.  If so, it would be a evidence to support the fractionation of CE.

Research paradigm:
Pressing key as fast as possible when the target stimuli occurred.  (The additional task of counting the number of stimuli didn't change the pattern of the result.)
Manipulation of attentional demands: 1. irrelevant stimuli the participants had to ignore (Exp. 1 in other modality while Exp. 2 and 3, also in the same modality). 2. Instructions requiring them to switch from responding signals in one modality to those in the other.

Since it is not a published article, I tried my best to restructured the results in my own way here... shall you be able to comprehend.

I don't know why it was not published (unless published under a different title) but I think there are some interesting experiments.

In the first two experiments, results consistently showed that irrelevant stimuli in the unattended modality slowed down the RT with the elderly slower than the younger.  However, controlling for the effect of "fluid intelligence," the age effect disappeared.

The condition in which the participants were asked to switch their attention to stimuli in the other modality was taken out from the third experiment because slower RT, especially the first response after switching, were observed and the age effect disappeared after partialling out the fluid intelligence factor in the first two sets of the experiments.  The authors suspected that it might be the manifestation of negative priming.

Negative priming... still related to worldview--> the inability to wsitch since you have been thinking this way since you became psychotic.

In the third set of the experiment, the authors added the scenario of irrelevant stimuli in the same modality (i.g., visual, auditory).  Controlling for the effects of "fluid intelligence" and "processing speed" (defined by the mean reaction time to ignore irrelevant stimuli in the unattended modality), there was still age effect on the time it takes to respond to target stimuli while having to ignore the irrelevant stimuli in the same modality.

The author stated that the findings were in line with Hasher and Zacks' (1988) proposal that "age limits the capacity for utilizing inhibition to sharpen attentional focus and limit distraction."  Since age effect disappeared when the distractors were in a different modality, it means there is no general deficit.  Thus, CE might have multiple components.

Low latent inhibition? We age faster? 8-O

The author also speculated what the differential inhibition abilities between the young and the elderly might be.

Ain't got no doubt that I have reduced ability in the inhibition department.  Also "subjects were slower in responding when they had to ignore irrelevant stimuli, particularly when these occurred within the same sensory dimension." No doubt... no wonder the work would suffer... take the phonological loop for instance... gotta maintain auditory hallucinations and verbal information together... overworked la!

For me, it sounds almost like... if the attentional focus is represented by a bell-shaped distribution with the target at the center, it's almost like the distributions (attentional focus) between the young and the elderly differ in the kurtosis perspective of the distribution (and of course... shall the mean and skewness of the distribution be set to zero).

Activation of long-term memory

A major portion of what I have run my mouth on is about the encoding and retrieval of LTM.  Nelson and Narens and Flavell all had spoken of LTM... Didn't really grasp the importance of LTM until Chi.

CE can activate long-term memory temporarily.

The story of KJ: KJ was an amnesic patient whose performance on the logical memory subset of Wechsler Memory Scale was above average although half an hour later, neither could he recall the stories and nor did he remember having been told these story.  The question is... how did he get the above average performance?

The author speculated that, in order to comprehend, KJ would have to set up a mental model about the stories using components of LTM.

Whether the mind come into existence is a tabula rasa is not the topic of discussion here--though possibly not... Based on studies conducted on "non-newborns," it appears that the phonological loop is no tabula rasa  and it is a system "developed on the basis of the phonological experiences of the remember."

Think about auditory hallucinations... where did they come from...  they never sound like Greek to me (since I don't understand Greek).

According to the author, the view of STM represents active LTM components itself seems theoretically insufficient since it provides no insight into the processes involved.  He is more interested in the differences between how these components behave in the phonological loop and visuospatial scatchpad, or the role of the slave systems in the encoding of memories of multimodality.

Research on the role of WM in the retrieval and encoding of LTM:

1. Recency effect (Baddeley& Hitch, 1993)
2. Working memory span (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980): The simultaneous need for the participants to process and store information by presenting them with a series of sentences and ask them to recall the last word of each sentence.  The maximum number of sentences to be processed while retaining the final word is the working memory span, which typically range between 2-5.

1. Turner and Engle (1989) replaced arithmetic operation with the sentence verification component of Daneman-Carpenter task.  This provided evidence for a more general limited-capacity system as opposed to a language processing system.  Score correlated highly with intelligence but exactly what it means... the author seemed to be unsure.
2. Cantor and Engle (1993) adapted the fan effect (Anderson, 1974) assumptions and techniques.  Anderson (1974) found out that it took participants less time to verify an object with fewer attributes/propositions than those with more. He explained the pattern by stating that each unit of the sentence triggers a limited amount of activation that spread to the associated features.  Since the amount of the activation is limited, the link to the associated features would be weaker when there are more features/propositions.  Cantor and Engle found that "the slope relating set size to verification time is steeper for subjects with a low working memory span (i.e., Daneman & Carpenter, 1980)" than for those with a high working memory span-- high-working-memory span subjects might have more activation available.  

"working memory might reflect the temporary activation of areas of long-term memory, with high-span subjects being able to activate more extensive regions of long-term memory."  Low latent inhibition... we psychotics? 8-O lol

Fan effect: like the example used in the analogy study on how to treat cancer patients... be targeted, identify the attributes of the symptoms--the themes-- rather than incidence by incidence.  Without the language, patients and people in general actually already do it automatically.  Since patients with thought disorder are already thinking too much (preferable or not), we should be able to learn to think thematically--a way to help unrest our brains to learn to think.

• Working memory span, fan effect, and Sternberg's "internal memory scanning mechanism" (the time it takes to decide whether a probe cames from a set is dependent on the set size.)

1. Conway and Engle (1994) conducted a study linking the fan effect and Sternberg's finding.  Participants were taught 2, 4, 6, and 8 letters to the extent that they can recall them perfectly and they can identify whether a letter belong to a given group.  The reaction time increased with the increase in set size and the slope between the set size and reaction time was steeper for than low-working-memory span group than the high group.  In addition, by delaying the presence of the probe after showing the set to be considered, Conway and Engle found that working memory span has no influence on the time to retrieve the info but the time it takes to perform verification.  It was thus concluded that the task of memory retrieval is automatic (imposing no stress on the limited-capacity system) though the time it takes to verify is dependent on the capacity of the system. (My question... is the retrieval from the STS or from the LTM?)

Love this part... "the data described so far are captured well by a model that assumes that individual differences in working memory reflect differences between subjects in the amount of activation available.  However, despite of this supportive evidence, Engle reports two further observations that cause him to abandon this hypothesis."  (Holly cow!  I really admire these researchers... like... not kosher... dumb it out?!)

First, what affects the high-working-memory group fail to have impact on the low-working-memory group

1. Dual task condition with category-generation task and something else
2. Having subjects to learn a subset of items to not include in category generation... even when the category they learned to exclude was totally different from the category they had to generate from.  Second, even more for the excitation hypothesis... how Sternberg's paradigm was applied... in Conway and Engle (1994).  Engle was concern that there were redundancies in the letters he used in the four sets in Conway and Engle (1994) and decided to run new experiments ridding off the redundancy issue.  In the results of these new experiments, the group difference in the slopes disappeared.  As a result, Engle entertained the notion of an executive with limited capacity to inhibit irrelevant information.

The concluding words of Baddeley for this section: "The presence of individual differences in inhibitory capacity does not, of course, rule out the possibility that excitatory processes also differ across individual.  However, Engle's results suggest at the very least that we need to look very carefully at claims for such differences."

The plausible automaticity in knowledge retrieval: As in the FOK research, FOK might not be accurate.  Yet, false positive is OK (all's symptom)... thus no need for verification as as to minimize the workload of WM.  Considering that our WM might not be so sharp, though might not be doing anything constructive, no nothing detrimental at least... Do no harm.

This is why I have a liking about the notion of fuzzy algorithm... something I really have no inkling about.  No need to be exact since the purpose is to survive... not to conduct scientifically based research.

Sure, there are individual differences in our capacity and we all have our own bottleneck.  At least, we have our own bottleneck to push and our own best to strive to perform in the face of life.

Conclusion: Should we sack the Homunculus?

More work needed... the future is yet to be seen.


The notion of low and high capacity kept on surfacing in this line of research.  The way I see it, having the realization of how the capacity can be constrained as a result of the medication and symptoms, let me accept the reality that I belong to the low capacity group.  As a result, I have to make extra effort on the things I attend to because what I attend to is likely to be encoded in my hard drive and be retrieved in the future.  The notion of phonological loop as no tabula rasa, for instance, also supports my way of thinking... that is... the operation of CE is partially dependent on what you have in LTM... remember the classic notion in data analysis... garbage in, garbage out... be ware what you put into the analysis engine. Grand delusional systems did not get built in one day... It's built through the constant recycling of disordered thoughts encoded in LTM.

Hubble: Galaxies Across Space and Time

The notion of watching what they were millions of years ago right now... is an interesting one...



5/27/2013 update: Oops... didn't mean to post it in this blog... but... since done... 

Shimamura, Arthur P. (2008). A neurocognitive approach to metacognitive monitoring and control

Shimamura, Arthur P. (2008). A neurocognitive approach to metacognitive monitoring and control. In J. Dunlosky & R. A. Bjork (Eds.), Handbook of metamemory and memory (pp. 373-390). New York: Psychology Press.

After I read the paper of Nelson and Narens, I came across the paper where Shimamura added the brain components to Nelson and Narens' model of metacognition and addressed the notions in the dynamic filtering theory.

Since I know for sure that the my brain is wired pretty wrong and in different ways, it's pretty cool to read up this paper and say... "Yes! Yes! Yes! I've gotta have problems there, too!"  Sort of reminding me of the experiences I (and some of my classmates) had when taking abnormal psychology for the first time in undergrad.  It seemed like all diagnosis in the neurosis department were applicable to me though I had such difficulties differentiating between delusions and hallucinations.  (Speaking of ignorance is a bless. lol 8-X)

As is shown in the figure above, neurobehavioral research has found the critical role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) on the top-down control of information processing (e.g., Fernandez-Duque, Baird, & Posner, 2000; E. K. Miller & Cohen, 2001; Shimamura, 2002a; Smith & Jonides, 1999).  Theorists have also worked on mapping out the metacognitive functions of PFC regions (Fernandez-Duque et al., 2000; Pannu & Kaszniak, 2005; Shimamura, 1996; Stuss, Gallup, & Alexander, 2001).

Dynamic filtering theory:  So, first of all, PFC is well connected with many cortical regions.  It was proposed that the well-connected PFC regulates the activation of the posterior cortex by way of a filtering/gating mechanism.  So, in this theory, the meta-level processors in the PFC control those at the object level in the posterior cortex.  How does PFC assert its control?  It's done through dynamic filtering... "the selection of appropriate signals and suppression of inappropriate signals."

The author considered the inhibitory control to be of particular importance because due to the inevitable interference among object-level processors.  When conflicts or interference are observed at the object-level, the meta-level has to make a decision on which process(es) to suppress and which to continue. In the author's own words, "Based on dynamic filtering theory, it is the interplay between PFC and posterior regions that implements both selective and suppressive control."

Also, because different regions of the PFC seems to be in charge of different things (though there might be overlaps in their functions), the way it sound... metacognition in the brain works almost like cloud/distributed computing.  8-O lol  At the end of this paper, the author did ask the question of whether there might be a CEO for the various PFC regions... sort of like... with the anterior PFC (BA10) offered as the plausible candidate.

This paper is also loaded with interesting notions and information; however, I will share with you the thoughts I have rather than providing a summary of the key ideas in this paper.

Monitoring and controlling stimulus encoding

One question that's been troubling me is whether metacognition can assert its impact at as early as the stage of sensory memory.   Why?  As a psychotic, it would be wonderful if hallucinations can get filter out before even entering the working memory so as to prevent the hallucinations from being incorporated in my delusional world (of course, the assumptions: hallucinations are first perceived in the sensory memory and the information processing model holds true).  Nothing intellectual... pure practical.

Though I feel sorry for patients with brain lesions, what the authors addressed in this section gives me hope...  "It is as if PFC lesions disrupt cortical processing in the posterior cortex by failing to gate or filter activations."

Though... questions... the plain old selection mechanism between Sensory memory and Working memory could be considered as metacognitive? 8-O (Interesting... Never thought of it this way... though no answer to it.)

Monitoring and controlling learning process

Notions under this title seem to be related to the functioning of working memory.

While studies have confirmed the role of PFC in the maintenance and manipulation of information in working memory, different prefrontal regions seem to maintain different kinds of information.

There is something interesting about the quote that "successful learning depends on a host of metacognitive control processes, including selection, maintenance, updating, and chunking."  When I first read this quote, so I thought... aren't these ordinary things at the cognitive or object-level?  Then I thought of the cross-sectional studies conducted on young children... how they need to be taught metacognitive strategies to help themselves learn... For instance, perhaps, not random selection or selecting for the purpose of selecting, but... strategic selection...

The discussion on proactive interference  are also very interesting.  Essentially, participants were given stimuli and were asked to determine if a stimuli had been shown to them before.  One group was given cues on whether they should attend to face or scene while the other group not.  It was found that the posterior cortical regions exhibited heightened activities on trials with task-relevant stimuli and reduced activities when task-irrelevant.  At the same time, previous studies have found the selective attention to be modulated by PFC.

Why do I find this discussion interesting?  It's like--you need to give yourself this cue about your observations in life--delusion or not?  If delusional, don't get your head too excited since it is irrelevant.  8-O

Monitoring and controlling retrieval processes

"[V]entrolateral PFC activity increases with increases in the number of competing responses (Wagner et al., 2001). Such regulation of semantic retrieval extends to other linguistic tasks, such as making decisions about the conceptual relatedness between items or interpreting difficult or ambiguous sentences (see Wagner
et al., 2001)."--Feels like it has something to do with delusion of references?

A Multilevel Model of Dynamic Filtering Theory and Extension of the Nelson and Narens Metacognitive Model

How I am wrong...

Biased to the processing of internal stimuli (hallucinations, delusions) and self-related contents

1. The ventrolateral PFC is integral in selecting semantic information and maintaining that information in working memory (Wagner et al., 2001; Thompson-Schill et al., 2002). 
2. The dorsomedial PFC (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex) is involved in monitoring cognitive conflict in object-level processors (Botvinick et al., 1999, 2004).

The failure to negate the "biased" information (e.g., delusions) after detection

1. The dorsolateral PFC facilitates the manipulation of information in working memory by updating and rerouting information processing (Shimamura, 2000; Simons & Spiers, 2003).

One faulty department that might have been the trigger for all my hospitalization with its impact even stronger towards hospitalization... ventromedial PFC... because... kaput ventromedial PFC--> Excessive motional arousal-->tying up the brain capacity-->interfering with the function of other PFC regions-->bye bye the monitoring and control of psychotic symptoms-->into the Club Meds I go.

1. [T]he ventromedial PFC enables the same kind of monitoring and control as other PFC regions, only it regulates affective processes rather than cognitive processes.

The feeling of knowing is also addressed in this paper... intuitively I would say... there is something about FOK... whether you believe it or not...

Nelson & Narens (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and some new findings.

Nelson, T.O. & Narens, L. (1990). Metamemory: A theoretical framework and some new findings. In G.H. Bower (Ed). The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 26, 125-173. New York: Academic Press

A: The abstract principles of metacognition

(The following three principles are the exact quotes)

1. Principle 1: The cognitive processes are split into two or more specifically interrelated levels: the meta-level and the object-level.
2. Principle 2: The meta-level contains a dynamic model of the object-level.
3. Principle 3: There are two dominance relations, called "control" and "monitoring," which are defined in terms of the direction of the flow of information between the meta-level and the object-level. This distinction in the direction of flow of information is analogous to that in a telephone handset.

This diagram in Nelson and Narens (1990) (p. 126) shows the theoretical mechanism consisting of the meta-level and the object-level and their relations.  

This diagram above shows a theoretical mechanism consisting of the meta-level (e.g., metacognition) and the object-level (e.g., cognition).

The authors used the telephone handset analogy to explain the information flow between the meta and the object levels.  The way I interpret it is... its' sort of like the relations between Gordon Ramsey and the chefs in Hell's Kitchen (if not simply the chefs and their dishes)... with what goes on in your head the equivalent of "Hells Kitechen." (At least mine).  (Could cook something up with my psychosis though might as well go directly with cooking...)

The role of Gordon Ramsey is equivalent to your metacognition and the role of the chefs, cognition.  What the chefs cook up are like the cognitive outcome and how they do the cooking, the cognitive processes.  As the chefs are busy cooking down there, Ramsey (meta-level) gets information about what is going on with the chefs (object-level)--this is the monitoring process.  After Ramsey (meta-level) processes the information he gathers, he (metal-level) goes on yelling at these chefs (object-level) and tells them (object-level) what to do, and the chefs go back on to cook following the directions of Ramsey... this is what the control relation is about.

It might be an even better analogies if there are multiple people with a role similar to that of Gordon Ramsey... since some theories believe that how metacognition works in the brain is more or less like the notion of cloud computing... different regions associated with different metacognitive roles.

Also, one thing I kept on hearing Ramsey yelled out loud was... "Out! Out! Out!" Well, maybe your metacognition doesn't do it... mine surely does it on a daily basis... 

1. Control

The notion behind control is that the meta-level modifies the object-level... its state or process... and contribute to actions at the object-level: 1. to initiate and action, 2. to continue an action, or 3. to terminate an action.

2. Monitoring

The basic notion behind monitoring is that the meta-level is informed by the object-level... and result in the change in the model the meta-level has on the situation, including "no change" (i.e., Gorgon Ramsey's view of how the kitchen is running).  

Interestingly, as per Nelson and Naren (1990), "the opposite does not occur, i.e., the object-level has no model of the meta-level."  Don't think I really understand it... and thus... don't have the audacity to agree or disagree... Yet, in the process of working on the psychotic model of how my psychotic mind works... including at the metacognitive level, aim I not building up a cognitive model (object-level) of my metacognition (meta-level)? 8-O

Donno, maybe I haven't quite gotta the notion the authors were trying to convey or my example might be buggy and I am too blind to see it.

3.  Role of subjective reports about introspection for inferences about monitoring

Following are some notions the authors mentioned about the methodological issues they encountered.

1. The measurement issue on introspective reports--the assumption behind using telescopes to observe and that when studying the use of telescopes as an instrument.  Were my head the equivalent of a telescope, I have no doubt doubting the validity of its outputs and distortions.  lol
2. Views on introspective reports: descriptions of internal processes (as per the Structuralist's view) vs. data to be explained.  
3. "A system that monitors itself (even imperfectly) may use its own introspections as input to alter the system's behavior."  I am in total agreement with this notion... the basic assumption of monitoring our psychotic mind with our disordered thinking.
4. Perception could be conceptualized as sensation plus inference... the coexistence of accuracy and distortion--true value and error.  Apparently, even the normal have to deal with the error term...

B. The monitoring and control of human memory

This diagram in Nelson and Narens (1990) (p. 129) shows examples of monitoring and control tasks at different stages of learning.

The way I see it... correct or not... what's between monitoring and control is the processes occurring at the cognitive or object level... for the perspective of information processing theory... the middle section looks almost like the working memory (WM).  When discussing the theoretical framework represented by the above model, the authors recommended the context of student studying for an exam to the readers. 

Among all, one thing that differentiates between the model of Flavell (1979) and this one (Nelson & Narens, 1990) is that Nelson and Narens broke it down further... the processes at the meta-level and object-level (e.g., WM) and subdivided monitoring into ease of learning, judgments of knowing and feeling of knowing.

Most of the things the authors discussed are captured in the above diagram.  In the following section, I will only mention the notions of interest to me.  

1. Acquisition stage: In advance of learning

a. Determining one's goal: the person's norm of study

1. A person's theory of retention is used to modulate how well the content has to be mastered in order for it to be remembered and recalled in the retention tasks.
2. The norm of study is the product of an individual's theory of retention... the mastery the individual believes he or she should obtained during the acquisition phase.

b. Formulating a plan to attain the norm of study

Retrospective monitory vs. Protrospective monitoring in the context of seeing airplanes in the sky:

• Retrospective monitoring (judgments of past performance): How well did I do the last time I saw an airplane flying in the sky?
• Protrospective monitoring (judgments about subsequent performance): How well might I fare the next time I see an airplane flying in the sky?

The authors further subdivided protrospective monitoring into three categories:

1. 1. Ease-of-learning (EOL): occurring in advance of acquisition.
2. 2. Judgments of learning (JOL): occurring during or after acquisition to predict future performance on currently recallable items
3. 3. Feeling of knowing (FOK): occuring during or after acquisition about whether a currently nonrecallable item is known and/or will be remembered in a subsequent test

Research found that EOL, JOL, and FOK are not highly correlated... meaning they measure different things... or these judgments might measure different aspects of memory with the structure underlying these judgments multidimensional.  

c. Ease of learning judgments.

The outcome of EOL can affect the amount of time allocated to study.

d. A Prior Choice of Processing judgments

After EOL, the person decides the kinds of processing to use on the study item.

e. Initial plan for the allocation of study time

Monitoring: this is a harder item to learn=>control: allocate more time

This diagram in Nelson and Narens (1990) (p. 132)

This is the diagram of my dream... since there's nothing new under the sun... I know I can found someone who has already gotten a model like this out... the separation of cognition and metacognition.  In this diagram, the upper portion (theoretical) represents metacognition while the lower portion, the processing in the working memory or cognitive level.

2. Acquisition stage: the ongoing learner

Following is the flowchart showing how learning works... at the metacognitive level and it's relation with the cognitive level.  One thing I love most that table titled metacognitive library, which, according to Flavell (1979) is rightfully encoded in LTM.  Why is this notion important? What is the likelihood that a certain strategy will be effective in intervening  a certain type of psychotic scenario?

This diagram in Nelson and Narens (1990) (p. 133)

Some processing involved in the above cycle...

a. Feeling of knowing for currently nonrecallable items.

FOK is linked to time allocation

b. Judgments of learning for currently recallable items:

Are you making judgments of future performance based on monitoring of information in the WM or long term memory?  Delayed recall might resolve this issue.

c. Updating the allocation of study time during a particular study trial of an item.

People study till the JOL for the item reach the norm of study though their judgments might be really off from the reality. Motivation might be a confounding factor.

d. Termination of study.

When JOL reaches the norm of study, study is terminated.

3. Retention stage

The maintenance of previously acquired knowledge might involve similar process as in the acquisition stage with the following additions:

1. 1. discrepancy between the desired degree of mastery and the assessed degree of mastery
2. 2. FOK-directed maintenance work

4. Retrieval stage: Termination

The distinction between self-directed and non-self-directed retrieval... Nelson and Narens focused on self-directed retrieval: the search itself and setting up the cues to initiate the search.  The following is the flowchart for the retrieval stage.

This diagram in Nelson and Narens (1990) (p. 136)

a. Quick initiation/termination of retrieval.

Possibly FOK-based with a latency far shorter than that for an actual recall. 

There is something very interesting about the notion of quick initiation and FOK... like... I know that feeling... can't give you the exact reason why but I think it's delusional... The FOK arrives before the identification.

b. Placement of retrieval termination:

The termination happens when someone is no longer willing to continue of the FOK no longer exceed the threshold of claiming to know the non-retrieved items. 

The good thing about my lack of creativity is that I seemed to have oversaturated the kinds of delusions my head is capable of creating... thus, not too many records for the head to search through when trying to answer the question of whether the observed event fit the profile of past delusions or not.  Given the limited number of search my head has to perform, and, I suspect, more sophisticated search algorithm it operates on as a result of being a more experienced psychotic (than in my younger years) plus my false-positive-allowed policy, there's gotta be an extremely high threshold for nonretrieved items.  Also, in the context of psychosis, premature termination might be something really risky... untreated delusions etc can become the weakest link my my head's security.

5. Retrieval Stage: Output of response.

People's threshold for outputting the retrieved answer might be affected by factors such as "cost vs. rewards.

6 Retrieval stage: Confidence judgments after recall

Commission error vs. omission error

After the description of the model, the authors went on discussion some issues concerning the methodology and relevant findings for their research.  Since my main interest is in the model itself, I will only mention the points of relevance to me.

1. Amount of information deposited in long-term memory is important for metacognitive monitoring. (That's why I went back to the psychiatric ward during the second full-blown episode.

a. Our early experiment

The FOK results

1. Reliability: People are consistent in their FOK judgments
2. Validity: The consistent judgments of people are not all that useful in predicting the outcome of future performance

b. Effect of degree of learning on retention interval on FOK accuracy

In order to perform monitoring, you need to have enough beef registered in the LTM.
With the retention rate, it looks like you have to lit it sit for some time to get the correct accessment.

c. Our first published experiment on metamemory

The degree of learning is important to FOK accuracy.  (Nelson, Leonesio, Shimamura, Landwehr & Narens, 1982)

d. Mechanisms for the overlearning effects on metacognitive accuracy:

1. Metacognitive judgments attempt to discriminate between items.  Higher accuracy in discriminating items when the differences between the items increase
2. Overlearning might enhance the stability of retention and increase the differences between items.

e. Empirical support for the item-discrimination mechanism

People are reasonably fine as measuring devices but their have limits in their ability to differentiate between objects.  The more different the item, the more likely for the metacognitive discrimination to be valid. Whether items could be validly discriminated is dependent on the person's ability to monitor and the degree of differences between items (difficulty level).

2. FOK may be perfectly valid at tapping a larger number of aspects of LTM but the accuracy of FOK for predicting criterion performance may nevertheless be imperfect.

This is an interesting one... in the context of psychosis, there is this FOK... the sense that the observation is delusional.  In reality, I treat all observations with uncertain intents as delusional--false positive allowed. For practical purposes, it doesn't have to be perfect... as long as no false negative.

FOK dependent on what's in LTM rather than in WM or unconscious memory.

3. Privileged access

a. Judge/observer experiments
People's prediction might benefit from the idiosyncratic information at their disposal during retrieval.
b. Normative predictions vs. the individual's own FOK prediction.
People's FOK predictions on their own subsequent performance on currently nonrecallable items  is better than the normative FOK prediction derived from the average prediction.  But individual's FOK predictions are worse than predictions derived from the normative probability of correct recall.  It has been found that the accuracy of people's FOK prediction is higher when given the normative probability of recall...Unfortunately, people seems to be poor at intuiting the normative probability of recall on items that can not recall.

4. Some factors underlying people's FOK judgments (vs. accuracy)

a. Overlearning affects not only FOK accuracy but als the magnitude of FOK.
b. Overlearning study trials vs. overlearning test trials.
Both the study trials and test trials affect the magnitude of subsequent FOK.
c. Actual overlearning vs. claimed overlearning.
Most effects of overlearning on FOK seemed to be mediated by people's belief about whether the items have been overlearned... as opposed to an "automatic" effect of overlearning.
The no-Magic Hypothesis for how FOK should be conceptualized: the person 1). considers particular recallable properties of the to-be-retrieved items) in conjunction with 2). rules about how the properties are related to the subsequent criterion performance that the person is trying to predict.

According to non-magic hypothesis, "FOK does not directly monitor a given unrecalled item in memory, but rather the FOK monitors recallable aspects related to that item, such as the item's acquisition history or partial/related recalled components."

5. Learning-to-learn effect for FOK judgment?

Can FOK accuracy be improved by sheer practice on FOK judgments? It doesn't matter whether you provide feedback or not on their FOK judgments... the practice effect is small shall it ever occur.

6. Relation between metacognitive monitoring and metacognitive control during acquisition: The allocation of self-paced study time.

The allocation of study time is also mediated by people's EOL and FOK in addition to a response to item difficulty.

If people believe that they have learned things well, it's useless to give them more time to learn.

7. Relation between metacognitive monitoring and metacognitive control during retrieval: termination of memory searching.

a. Role of "preliminary FOK judgments" prior to searching for an answer.

1. Single-counter FOK hypothesis: one FOK component that only taps the presence of information in memory
2. Dual-counter FOK hypothesis: tapping both the presence and absence of information in memory.

This diagram is in Nelson and Narens (1990) (p. 164)

Results indicated in the above diagram confirms the dual-counter hypothesis.

b. Relation between ongoing FOK and the latency of recall errors.

The substantial correlation between FOK and the latency of omission errors indicates that people's FOK affects whether the overall retrieval stage with be continued or terminated. However, the correlation between FOK and the latency of commission errors is nil for general-information items.  The difference could be considered as the manifestation of the differential mechanism involved as shown in figure 5 above.

c. Relation between metacognitive confidence judgments and the latency of recall.

While the latency of recall affects the confidence of judgment, distance between the the curves showed that something else is affecting people's confidence.  

This diagram is in Nelson and Narens (1990) (p. 167)

Love how the authors put it... "We do not yet know what that something is, but future research should attempt to isolate and identify it."

One thing I found most interesting is the notion of feeling of knowing (FOK)... 

A lot of times, this is how delusions manifest themselves... no hallucination and anything else attached... simply the FOK dropping by and landing on the working memory... like... I knew the the apocalypse was coming again, I know they are checking out everything I do including my internal blog, I know they are talking about this blurb I am working on now, or I know some other things a like out of no where that I have never known and maybe in contexts I have never been in.  How do I know it?  I could feel it... the gut feeling... I just know it, believe it. (Of course, this FOK I have spoken of up to this point might not be the FOK Nelson & Narens (1990 ) were talking about... unless... it's about one of the multiple manifestations of the same principle?  Donno.)  

Then, I would have the FOK about the above FOK... something fishy there... feels like delusions... Even before I have to explicate to myself which part of the scenario seems delusional, I intervene by means such as what Ramsey said to some chefs... "Out! Out! Out!"

So I came across the notion of FOK and the associated research findings... as well as the no-magic hypothesis... as summarized above... Then, I thought... a good way of conceptualizing the fishy kind of FOK... it surely could be true that, after being delusional for over a decade, I must have enough delusions encoded in my LTM to boost up the accuracy rate of my FOK.  My head might have, somehow, figured out the attributes of delusional dasein, which, theoretically, is the basis of how FOK works... in spite of my inability to have it articulated.  If this is really how it works, it would be really beneficial for my head since the last thing I need is to constantly access my memories of psychosis... not to mention that the constant access might strengthen the path towards them and make them easily activated.

At the same time, since I treat all observations with uncertain intents as symptomatic... allowing for false positive, I don't need the FOK to be accurate in all perspectives... as long as no false negative.

Flavell (1979) Metacognition and cognitive monitory--In Ratprincess' eyes

Flavell's definition of Metacognition: knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena.  Metacognition plays an important role in tasks like language acquisition and problem solving.  The notion of metacogntion is applied in areas such as cognitive behavior modification (CBT?)

Flavell's model of cognitive monitoring

Flavell considered cognitive monitoring is done through the actions and interactions of four classes of phenomena: a) metacognitive knowledge, b) metacognitive experiences, c) goals/tasks, and d) actions/strategies.  Metacognitive knowledge and experiences are considered to differ from cognitive knowledge and experiences in the nature and contents--but not in the form or quality.

Metacognitive knowledge:

1. Flavell's definition: The segment of knowledge that has to do with people as cognitive creatures and with their cognitive tasks, goals, actions, and experiences.
2. Ex. I have disordered thinking and my reality might not be shared by the others.

Metacognitive experiences:

1. Flavell's definition: Any conscious cognitive or affective experiences that accompany and pertain to any intellectual enterprise.
2. Ex. Before Valentine's Day, 2008, I had the metacognitive knowledge that my psychotic symptoms were really bad but I failed to observe enough symptoms to match up with my expectations.

Goals/tasks

1. Flavell's definition: The objectives of a cognitive enterprise.
2. Ex.  Detect delusions.

Actions/strategies

1. Flavell's definition: The cognition or other behaviors employed to achieve the goals/tasks.
2. Ex.  Match observations with established corpus of contents, behavioral patterns, and impacts of delusions.

Metacognitive knowledge

Flavell (1979) considered metacognitive knowledge to consist of "knowledge or beliefs about what factors or variables act and interact in what ways to affect the course and outcome of cognitive enterprise."  He also classified these factors into three major categories--person, task, and strategy.

Person

1. Intraindividual differences:  I can handle my head better with the tactics than without.  
2. Interindividual differences:  The tactics working for me might not be appropriate for the others
3. Universals of cognition:  There are different degrees of proficiency we can achieve in the different learning tasks--the application of the tactics.  Sometimes it might be difficult for us to detect our defects and control it with the workarounds.  You also have the insight that you might not be able to perform later what you can able to perform now and vice versa.

Task

1. The nature of information:  The nature of information (e.g., contaminated by psychotic symptoms) might make it difficult to warrant "accurate" (i.e., align with the reality shared by the others) judgments about the "world." 
2. Task demands and goals:It's harder for me to engage in higher-order cognitive processing without invoking the symptoms.

Strategy

It's possible to devise strategies that can be effective to achieving the goal of neutralizing and negating delusional notions--such as airplane flying in the sky and flight 1549.

"Metacognitive knowledge is not fundamentally different from other knowledge stored in long-term memory."  As a result, it can be retrieved through either deliberate conscious search (e.g., the search for a strategy) or be done unintentional and automatically.

Metacognitive knowledge can be...

1. Inaccurate: I allow for false positive... all observations with uncertain intents are classified as symptomatic.
2. Fail to be activated: You can't detect delusions that's already classified by your head as the reality shared by the others.
3. Fail to have much or any influence when activated: The general awareness that I am delusional itself sometimes doesn't stop the delusion to have impacts on me.
4. Can fail to have a beneficial or adaptive effect when influential: When the symptoms were bad back in the era of origami, around the time when Dr. Strauss used to come visit me, origami worked for certain times and the focus on origami calmed my head down after getting overheated.  Then, at some time, when the symptoms were more on the wildside again, origami surely calmed the head down but, when concentrated on papge folding, the voices became even more prominent since all's quite except for the voices.  Though... I did pull it through...

Metacognitive knowledge can lead people to "select, evaluate, revise, and abandon cognitive tasks, goals, and strategies in light of their relationship with one another and with your own abilities and interests with respect to that enterprise."

For the perspective of the delusional enterprise, there is something interesting about the notion of abandoning cognitive tasks, goals, and strategies.  So, for instance, when doing literature review now, I would hear people say things like I am a copycat...  instead of making it a goal to figure out how they get the up-to-date information on what I had just done and find the strategies to intervene accordingly and how they are wrong... as a delusion, upon the observation, I have to abandon that default task and shift to the task of negating the belief in formation to prevent the further build up of the delusional system and conspiracy theory.

Metacognitive experiences

"Many metacognitive experiences have to do with where you are in an enterprise and what sort of progress you are making or are likely to make."

How psychotic am I today in comparison to, say, one week ago before the dosage change with the enterprise being the psychotic enterprise.  This sentence speaks for the inconnectedness between metacognitive knowledge and experiences since how I feel involves the comparison of my metacognitive knowledge about my state of being a week ago and the new metacognitive knowledge derived through my recent experiences.

Metacognitive experiences are especially likely to take place in situations that requires "careful, highly conscious thinking"... such as as when decisions and actions are both weighty and risky, and where there is absence of high affective arousal or other inhibiting factors (e.g., Langer, 1978).

The decisions I make and actions I take in handling my psychotic symptoms are surely weighty and risky.  History has taught me the lesson of one step wrong... whole path wrong.  That should be weighty and risky enough.

Metacognitive experiences and effects on cognitive goals/tasks, actions/strategies, and metacognitive knowledge

• Metacognitive experiences can lead you to establish new goals and to revise or abandon old ones.

1. Instead of running my head on where the surveillance devices are, change the goal to getting better in using workarounds to negate and neutralize the symptomatic observations

• Metacognitive experiences can affect your metacognitive knowledge base by adding to it, deleting from it, or revising it... the Piagetian notion of assimilation and accommodation.

1. This is why I went direct into the cuckoo's nest the second time.  I had insufficient metacognitive knowledge base on tasks such as symptom detection, which are derived through metacognitive experiences.

• Metacognitive experiences can activate cognitive or metacognitive goals.  The purpose of cognitive strategies are to make cognitive process and that for the metacognitive strategies is to monitor the progress.

1. Cognitive goals and strategies: I sense my defects arising, it activates the retrieval of appropriate intervening strategies... such as airplane flying by... flight 1549.  The workarounds are the cognitive strategies aim at stopping the buildup of my delusional system.
2. Metacognitive goals and strategies: Now I applied the cognitive strategy to intervene, the metacognitive goal I have is to assess the level of impact the intervention has, how well the cognitive strategy works, how I can improve upon the intervention, what else can be done (thereby generating another metacognitive experience)

However, the effects might not be as clear-cut.  For instance, the monitoring of the effects of my cognitive goal might also result in the improvement.

At the same time, as per Flavell, the store of metacognitive knowledge might contain both cognitive and metacognitive knowledge.  

Developmental and educational implications

A differentiation process, Children's development in the notion of understanding--the universal

1. Understanding or not understanding
2. The level of understanding
3. The difficulties involved in making accurate assessments and associating factors (e.g., intense affect, mental or physical illness.)

Questions posed by Flavell:

How much good does cognitive monitoring actually do us in various types of cognitive enterprise?

Some good... in the psychotic cognitive enterprise...

Might it not even do more harm than good, especially if used in excessive or nonselectively?

Excellent question, that's why the identification of tactics to use our head in more selective fashion so that we don't overheat it.

Think of the feckless obsessive, paralyzed by incessant critical evaluation of his own judgments and decision?

Interesting notions here... In reality, delusionals are by default floating in a sea of critical evaluations on their judgments and decision.  This is why, since we are already doing it in our everyday life, might as well do it in a way--away from harm's way.  

Flavell's personal opinion: Training on metacognition is possible.  For instance, Brown, Campione and Barcly  trained children with learning challenges to use self-testing strategies on certain tasks.  A year later, when these kids were tested on the same tasks again, not only were they able to applied the strategies they were taught, some even modified the strategies to make them more effective.

"In many real-life situation, the monitoring problem is not to determine how well you understand what a message means but to determine how much you ought to believe it or do what it says to do."

Absolutely the real life statements for psychotics... shall I believe in my delusions or shall I do what my hallucinations tell me to do?  Shall I cut myself to save some blood because they were going to swap the sample (my second full-blown episode)?  For psychotics, we need to learn as per the words of Flavell "how much you ought to believe it or do what it says to do"--what you see, what you hear, and what you think.  When defects are detected, your search for the most pertinent cognitive strategies to intervene, and further assess how well your intervention achieved the cognitive goal of stopping the build up of the delusional system.

Prevalence rate of Psychosis

In search of the estimated prevalence rate of psychosis:

England: Meta-analyses with pooled statistics 31.7/100,000 person per year Incidence of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses in England, 1950–2009: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses

Finland: Population study yielding 3.06% (3.48% when nonresponding group with diagnosis included) Lifetime Prevalence of Psychotic and Bipolar I Disorders in a General Population

In addition, some other stats to entertain although I have not checked the original sources

Office For National Statistics, London, 2002

1. 4 women per 1,000 women aged 16-64 with a psychotic disorder in England and Wales 2000
2. 5 men per 1,000 men aged 16-64 have a psychotic disorder in England and Wales 2000
3. 4 per 1,000 population aged 16-64 in England and Wales 2000 with a psychotic disorder

In addition, just by looking at the prevalence rate of Schizophrenia (not counting other types of psychotic disorders)... approx 1 in 123 or 0.81% or 2.2 million people in USA.

Which estimate is closer to the global true score?  

Regardless... ain't quite so impossible for one to be affected by psychosis... I guess?!

No threat intended... but anyone could become one of us.  Guess it's why it's important to study psychosis and find ways to intervene... though the prevalence rate isn't exactly high... it ain't so low.  sigh

Run by or run through

When I was at a dinner yesterday, they were talking about a Japanese restaurant and I said to this lady who originally came from Japan... "All they have to do is to run it through you..."

Sounds weird to me (should it be "by" instead) and them English speakers seemed to have problems comprehending my English as well... lol

So I looked it up in the dictionary for the appropriate usage of the runs... 8-O lol

ALSO... it should've been "run by" instead of "run through." 

Dictionary definition as per Merriam-Webster dictionary online:

— run by or run past

: to present to (as for evaluation) <ran some ideas by her>

Running through, apparently, means something else... oops... (guess, I have to let Ratology run itself through to the extend that I thought "through" is the only thing to follow "run"... 8-O 8-X lol)

One more of them mistakes down!

My mistakes etc.

I find myself using "etc." a whole lot in writing (in Ratology).  Two questions that came two me were whether I need an "and" before "etc." and whether I need another period if "etc." is used at the end of the sentence.

Apparently, I am not along on this planet with these questions--which made it relatively easier to find the answers:

1. There is no need for an "and" before "etc."  "Etc." is the abbreviation for the Latin expression et cetera where "et" means "and," and "cetera," "the rest".  Thus, saying "and etc." could be like saying "and and the rest"--the "and" is therefore redundant.      
2. Don't double up periods.  One period is enough--the period after the abbreviation can also serve as the period.  It is also recommended to write the whole phrase out or to avoid placing abbreviations (e.g., etc.) at the end of sentences.  Yet, when the sentence ends with either an exclamation mark and question mark, you need to keep both punctuation marks. 

In the processing of searching for the answers to the aforementioned questions, I found more issues that I were not even aware of...

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, "etc." is preceded by a comma and should be "(unless it ends a sentence) followed by a comma when it is the final item in a series" (6.20 Commas with “etc.” and “et al.”).  "Etc." should also not appear "at the end of a list that begins with e.g. (or phrases similar to such as, for example), which properly introduces a short list of examples."  In addition, "[etc.] should never be used in reference to people... (and indeed it should be used only after at least two items, never just one). But often writers seem to run out of thoughts and tack on etc.for no real purpose." 

Also, as per the definition of "etc." on dictionary.com, "etc." is "used to indicate that more of the same sort or class might have been mentioned, but for brevity have been omitted."  The way I read it... though it can be a catch-all phrase--it can only be a catch-all phrase for things of the same class (e.g., fruit, animal, dinos).  Yet, don't use it if people are unfamiliar with the items with the class.

I am going to end this post by identifying the mistakes I have made so far in my life concerning the usage of "etc.":

1. Put an "and" before "etc."
2. Might have put an additional period after "etc."
3. Might have not put a comma after "etc."
4. Left out the period for the abbreviation.
5. Used "etc." when the list began with "e.g.," "such as," "for instance," or "for example."
6. Used "etc." in a list with less than two items.
7. Used "etc." simply because I ran out of thoughts.
8. Used "etc." when items in the list might not belong to the same class.

So it is--my preferred Bad English is my preferred Bad English and mistakes are mistakes.  My lessons learned for the day--mistakes etc. 8-O lol

References
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/etc
et cetera
Ending a Sentence with an Abbreviation
Ending a sentence with an abbreviation [duplicate]
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch06/ch06_sec020.html
http://www.columbiaseminary.org/coffeetalk/035.html