Flavell (1987). Speculations about the nature and development of metacognition

Pensive coffee drinker quietly reading the book...
(not yours think-aloud self talker. lol 8-X)

This article is the reason why I landed on the book "Metacognition, motivation, and understanding" and the last one to go through.  Although this book dated back to 1987, it gave me an absolute amount of updates on topics relating to metacogntion.

This article resolved two issues I was pulling my hair off for due to my ignorance and during the time when my cuckoo head wouldn't allow me to touch the literature...

First, the cognition of cognition is called metacognition.   What about affect?  Meta-affect? 8-O Apparently, Flavell had explicated that the concept could be broadened to include anything psychological.

 Second, given the linkage between automaticity and unconsciousness (no need for efforts), with extensive practices, could metacognitive monitoring and regulation reach automaticity? Apparently, it's not a useless question my tangential head entertains only since so postulated Flavell... "researchers may eventually feel compelled to include processes that are not conscious and perhaps not even accessible to consciousness as forms of metacognition or metacognitive-like phenomena."

Flavell, John H. (1987). Speculations about the nature and development of metacognition. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 21-29). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"Metacognition is usually defined as knowledge and cognition about cognitive objects, that is, about anything cognitive.  However, the concept could reasonably be broadened to include anything psychological, rather than just anything cognitive.  For instance, if one has knowledge or cognition about one's own or someone else's emotions or motives, it could be considered metacognitive." (p. 21)

Thank you.  I was gonna start another neologism called "meta-affect."

"Because some metacognitive knowledge and cognitive self-regulatory activity is not very accessible to consciousness, researchers may eventually feel compelled to include processes that are not conscious and perhaps not even accessible to consciousness as forms of metacognition or metacognitive-like phenomena."

Can metacognitive processes reach automaticity?

"Metacognitive knowledge refers to the part of one's acquired world knowledge that has to do with cognitive (or perhaps better, psychological) matters."  (p. 21)

Metacognitive Knowledge (see also Flavell, 1979)

1. Person variable: About universal, "it is hard to imagine a culture in which people grow up without acquiring any naive psychology; in particular, without developing any intuitions about the way the human mind works." (Theory of mind?)
2. Task variable
3. Strategy variables: "In the course of development one learns about cognitive strategies for making cognitive progress (e.g., adding numbers together to get the sum) and about metacognitive strategies for monitoring the cognitive progress (e.g., adding numbers together a few more times to ensure the value of the sum is correct).

"It should be emphasized that person, task, and strategy variables always interact, and that intuitions about their interaction are also acquired."

Intuition is acquired... like learned?  Implicit knowledge?  Interesting.

Metacognitive experiences (see also Flavell, 1979)

"Metacognitive experiences are conscious experiences that are cognitive and affective." (P. 24)

"Metacognitive experiences play a very important role in everyday cognitive lives.  As one grows older one learns how to interpret and respond appropriately to these experience." (p. 24)

"Younger children have more trouble than older children in properly comprehending their own feelings of incomprehension, and in properly appreciating the meaning, significance, and implications of such metacognitive experiences.

Questions, problems and issues

• "Where does metacognition fit in psychological space?  That is, what other psychological concepts does it relate to and how does it relate to these concepts?" (e.g., executive processes)
• What types of metacognition are there and what are the foundations or prerequisites of their development?  "Is the acquisition, use, and usefulness of some types of metacognition impeded by information-processing limitation or biases, by lack of relevant experiences in most environment, or by other factors?"

Changes and experiences (p. 25-26)

1. There might be cognitive-developmental changes that could lead directly to metacognitive acquisition
2. there could be changes which increase the child's cognitive readiness to profit from experiences that promote metacognitive development
3. developmental changes might increase the opportunities to experience that could lead to the acquisition of metacognitive development

An individual who can create conscious and explicit representations of the past, present, and the future should be in a better position to make metacognitive process than one who does not.

The role of experiences (p. 26)

1. Practice makes perfect
2. Practice things that are not metacognitive in nature but lead to metacognitive development

Metacognition is useful for organisms with the following properties

1. An abundance of cognition
2. Thinking is fallible and error-prone; therefore the need for monitoring and regulation (No doubt about it in me)
3. An intent to communicate, explain and justify thinking to the others and oneself
4. In order to survive or prosper
5. Need to make weighty, carefully considered decisions
6. a need or proclivity for inferring and explaining psychological events in itself and other

"However, none of us has yet come up with deeply insightful, detailed proposals about what metacognition is, how it operates, and how it develops." (p. 28)

Wow...

Brown, Ann. (1987). Metacognition, executive control, self-regulation, and other more mysterious mechanisms

This article is about the definition of metacognition... its blanket nature and fuzzy boundaries.  It and other papers in the book also addressed a question I have had since the beginning of the recent literature review process... or the difficulties I have in making linkage between Baddeley's Central Executive and the executive notion of Metacognition.  

An interesting question for myself... what it be like if I read this paper and papers alike at the beginning of the literature review phase?  The way I see it... (a hypothesis)... you can't pretend the outcome without going through the motion and you can't get the answer until you pose the question.  How true?  Donno.

Brown, Ann. (1987). Metacognition, executive control, self-regulation, and other more mysterious mechanisms. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 65-116). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"Metacognition refers to understanding of knowledge, an understanding that can be reflected in either effective use or overt description of the knowledge in question." (P. 85)

"Metacognition refers loosely to one's knowledge and control of own cognitive system.  Two primary problems with the terms are: it is often difficult to distinguish between what is meta and what is cognitive; and there are many different historical roots from which this area of inquiry developed."

Some confusions

• The interchangeability of cognitive and metacognitive functions such as in metacognition and reading. 

1. Nice quote:  "According to Dewey, learning was 'learning to think' and reading was thinking stimulated by texts."

• A second source of confusion concerning the wide spread use of the term metacognition is that, within the modern psychological literature, it has been used to refer to two distinct areas of research: knowledge about cognition and regulation of regulation.  

1. "Knowledge about cognition refers to the stable, statable, often fallible, and often late developing information that human thinkers have about their own cognitive processes." (p. 67-68) (Donno about you, I am damn sure that native psychology of mine is more than often wrong.)
2. "activities (predicting outcomes, scheduling strategies, and various forms of vicarious trial and error, etc). Prior to undertaking a problem, monitoring activities (monitoring, testing, revising, and re-scheduling one's strategies for learning) during learning; and checking outcomes (evaluating the outcome of any strategic actions against criteria of efficiency and effectiveness).  It has been assumed that these activities are relatively unstable, not necessarily statable, and relatively age independent (i.e., task and situation dependent)... Knowing how to do something does not necessarily mean that the activities can be brought to the level of conscious awareness and report on to others." (P. 68)  (I suspect that the majority of the psychotics perform symptom detection on a daily basis.  Ain't got no idea why I have to turn the 不可說 into words.  Sadomasochist, I guess.)

Roots of metacognition

In the following section, the author "four historically separate, but obviously interlinked, problems in psychology that pertain to issues of metacognition."

Verbal reports as cognitive processes

Spinoza:"... He who knows something knows at the same time that he knows it and he knows as well that he knows what he knows." (p. 70) (Wow... this can compete with "Are you sure you are sure you are sure?" lol)

Locke "till the understanding turns inwards upon itself, reflects on its own operations, and makes them the object of its own contemplation." (p. 70)

The issue on "the distinction between multiple and reflective access."

Rozin's accessibility theory

1. Intelligence components can be strictly welded to constrained domains (i.e., skills available in one situation are not readily used in others, even though they are appropriate)... though not necessarily.
2. Even if skills are widely applicable but not tightly welded, they need not be conscious statable. 

Pylyshyn

1. Multiple access refers to the ability to use knowledge flexibily because it can be systemically varied to fit a wide range of conditions, knowledge is informationally plastic.
2. Reflective access refers to the ability to "mention as well as use" the components of the system

Consensus within discrepancies: "the most stringent criteria of understanding involve the availability of knowledge to consciousness and reflection"... therefore, verbal reports as data is kosher.  

Problems associated with verbal report

1. There is the obvious problem of asking children to reliably inform on the content of their own conscious processes.
2. What one knows might not be what one does.  What is needed is a theory as to when one may expect to find a relationship between a subject's verbal reports and actions, and exactly what that relationship would be.

The context... 

1. "verbal reports are often taken in situations where the knowledge being assessed may be transient, is elicited in the face of a particular task or context, or is elicited during the actual performance of a task." (p. 73)
2. The problematic procedure to ask children to describe how they would behave in certain hypothetical situation. (p. 74)

The need to distinguish between

• predictive verbalizations
• concurrent verbalizations
• retrospective verbalization
• and specific and general information questions

Demand characteristics: Feeling compiled to be a good participants and reported to have done what the researchers asked them to do though knowing they didn't do it.

An excellent point... it's a very good question to ask, "How much is my documentation contaminated by the effects of demand characteristics albeit all due efforts to speak the truth as I see it?"  How discrepant are what's being said and what's being done since talk is cheap?  How do we catch it in ourselves?  

Reminding me of the observer effect at the quantum world... cool... (I am surely tangential... fun though... 8-O lol)

An adequate theory of the relation of verbal reports to actual performance must include some a priori predictions of when verbal reports influence performance and when they do not.  "Future research could concentrate on the specific circumstances which would result in a metacognitive-cognitive link.  Under what circumstances would one predict a positive or a negative relationship between verbal reports and performances?  (p. 75)

"The relation between "thinking aloud" and problem solving can sometimes be beneficial.  This is particularly true if the type of verbalization that is required is a statement of a rule or a reason for an action... The Gagne and smith finding (1962) findings are robust and suggest that forcing learners to make a rule explicit helps the learning process, as well as the transfer of the rule." (p. 76)

A good excuse for my incurable think-out-loud (aka talking to myself) real life practice... 8-O lol

"Verbal reports can often have a negative effect on the learning process.  This situation occurs when the requirement for overt verbalization competes for central processing capacity with the processes that must be reported....  Many current information processing models claim that with repeated practice many of the intermediate steps of both thought and action become automatized, and therefore, they are even less available to conscious introspection." (p. 76-77)

The symptoms... surely automatic... one of the reason why it's so difficult to look at the processing of the symptoms and so difficult to break it down.

Albeit inconsistencies in existing research, "greater transfer across problem isomorphs of an inferential reasoning task [was found] when, after each problem, three- and four-year-old learners were required to describe the solution to Kermitt the frog so that he could also perform the task... Questions cannot be adressed, or answered adequately, unless researchers are precise about the type of verbalization, the type of cognitive process, and the theoretical rationale for expecting a positive, negative, and neutral relation between verbalization and the cognitive process." P. 78"

Executive control within an information processing framework

"The second historical root of things metacognitive is the notion of executive control taken from the information processing models of cognition." (p. 79)

"Information-processing theories emerged in the mid-1960s along with the growing interest in computer competence and machine simulation of though.  The concurrent development of psychological models was greatly influenced by the theories and jargon of synthetic intelligence; during the past 15 years the computer metaphor has dominated theories of human cognition." (p. 79)

"The notion of executive control was in general vogue by the early 1970 (Greeno & Bjork, 1973) and was introduced into developmental psychology (Brown, 1974, 1975)." (p. 79-80)


I know a place where you can get away
It's called a dance floor, and here's what it's for so

Come on, Vogue, Vogue

Don't just stand there, let's get to it
Strike a pose,there's nothing to it 

"A two-process approach to thinking, automatic and controlled processing, predates information-processing models." (p. 80)

1. Posner and Snyder's (1974) "conscious strategies" and "automatic activation
2. Shiffrin's (1975) "controlled vs systemic processing"
3. Norman and Bobrow's (1975) "resource limited and "datalimited processing
4. Laberge's (1975) "automatic focusing
5. Brown (1975) "deliberate and involuntary" 
6. Hasher and Zack (1979) "effortful and automatic"
7. Naus and Halasz (1978) "strategic versus automatic"

"For developmental psychologists, there are many interesting questions questions concerning automatization" (p. 81)

• "a great deal of the development that occurs with increasing expertise (age) is the result of processes that were originally controlled, effortful, and laborious becoming automated."
• "processes that do not demand strategic control are efficient, even in the young, and are less sensitive to developmental changes."

Executive power: the major problems are the traditional ones of consciousness and who has it.

Norman (1980): "Consciousness is a peculiar stepchild of our discipline, agreed to be important, but little explored in research and theory.  There are legitimate reasons for this relative neglect.  This is a most difficult topic, one for which it is very difficult to get the hard, sensible evidence that experimental disciplines require... We cannot understand (thinking) until we come to a better appreciation of the working of the mind, of the several simultaneous trains of thought that can occur, of the differences between conscious and subconscious processing, of what it means to focus upon one train of thought to the exclusion of others.  What-who- does the focussing?... And what does it mean to have conscious attention?  Can there be attention that is not conscious?  What-who-experiences the result of conscious attentional processes?" (p. 81)



What is "I"?  "The ghost in the machine, the homunculus" (p. 81)? What-who? Same issue that got Baddeley pretty troubled as well ...

"Central to the issues of metacognition are computer planning models that attempts to model problem-solving behavior."  The author went on to describe 3 models and how they worked.  (p. 83)
"with increasing sophistication, information processing, and artificial intelligence models have gained more power by paying increasing attention to the 'metacognitive' aspect of thinking." (p. 85)

• preplanning and planning-in-action
• planning and control
• preaction and trouble shooting
• planning and monitoring

"The central place of executive functions, such as planning and monitoring, is asserted in most current models of human and machine information processing, and there is a dearth of clear data, developmental or otherwise, that support this assertion." (p. 85-86)

"patients with frontal-lobe syndrome... experience extraordinary difficulty with error correction... described as simultaneously preservative and distractible, a failure in intelligent focusing attributed to damage to the supervisory attentional mechanism, or executive system." (p. 87)

Though different pathology, I see similarity... error detection and symptoms (e.g., hallucination, delusion) detection.  Preservative on "self-centric notion" and easily distractible from things I intend to focus on... especially when the mental state is worst off... regardless of the psychotic age... unless simply a constant process of regressing back to the early psychotic age?

Young children's difficulty to set up plans

The fledgling me just ain't got enough beef to set up the plans?  

1. Learned?
2. Brain structure including the component of encoded memory?
3. The combination?

"In general, children have difficulty detecting inconsistencies in messages, unless those inconsistencies are particularly blatant or salient) (p. 88)

Symptom detection.

"The influence of task difficulty and familiarity must be considered in any examination of the child's propensity to plan and monitor his or her own activities." (p. 88)

Self-regulation, metaprocedural reorganization, and reflected abstraction from the Piagetian school of developmental psychology

"metacogntions... encompass regulatory functions, such as error detection and correction... The historical roots of these concepts can be found in most of the major developmental theories." (P. 89)

Piaget's theory of regulation

"for Piaget, self-regulation, error correction, trial-and-error, theory testing, etc., need not be conscious experiences, but may occur in the plane of action; however, the highest level of theory building and testing is conscious."

Conspiracy theory?  Now I know... it's my consciousness that screws my head up... 8-O lol

"Because consciousness is not directly linked to conceptualization, the child's 'reaction remain elementary, the subject is likely to distort conceptualization of what he observes, instead of recording it without modification."

Interesting notion to entertain... Reporting in DWM up to now... there seems to be some differences-- even when I was telepathic like how I was last year this time.  Though... back to the notion... "the subject is likely to distort conceptualization of what he observes."

Metaprocedural reorganization and systemization

Children's progress in theory development

1. "There is a developmental lull, or even a seemingly retrogressive state, when errors predominate." Original theory-->discrepancy identification-->Multiple theory-->Test for a unified theory. (p. 93)
2. Metaprocedural reorganization leads to a stepping-up in theory complexity when partially adequate, juxtaposed systems are well established. (Foundation.)  (p. 93)
3. "Meta procedural reorganization is not solely the response to external pressure or failure, rather it occurs spontaneously when the child has developed well functioning procedures that are incomplete, but adequate for the task at hand... A similar U-shaped developmental pattern has been observed in children's language acquisition).

The acquisition of a non-native language as the analogy of learning to live with psychosis.  Interlanguage...

Also, creative simplification (Karmiloff-Smith and Inhelder, 1974-1975) as opposed to overgeneralization-- surely sounds much better!  lol

Levels of self-regulation

Conscious or unconscious...

• Karmiloff-Smith (1979): "reference is being made to spontaneous metaprocedural behavior rather than to explicit awareness."
• "Error detection and correction as an implicit process

As opposed to the notion of metalinguistic awareness--the capability to consciously reflecting on one's own language and that of the others.

"Confused in the metacognitive literature, even lost in some versions of the concept, is the essential distinction between self-regulation during learning and mental experimentation with one's own thoughts." (p. 97)

Surely sounds far better than I am simply an incurably dumb axx.  lol

Other-regulation, a Vygotskian notion

Vygotsky's (1971) theory of internalization and social learning.

Status of metacognition as a concept

Brown's notion on theory development:
"Sientific theorizing, like any other, must pass through stages.  Consider as an example, the novice block balancers described earlier.  Initially, they are merely goal oriented; they concentrate on getting the new theory to work.  The next stage is to develop and refine subsystems so that they work fluently.  Only when these subsystems are functioning efficiently can the theorist step back and consider the entire problem space and systematize or reorganize it into a cohesive whole.  The recent history of theory development in the realm of metacognition can be viewed in this light."

""Currently a great deal of systematic work is being undertaken, hopefully, it will lead to fluently functioning subsystems that at present are merely juxtaposed, existing, and developing side-by-side; however, this is an essential stage of theory building.  Later, perhaps, when the main subsystems are better understood, metaprocedural reorganization may be possible, and a full understanding of the domain metacognition will be attained.  This chapter is primarily a contribution to the "juxtaposed procedures" stage of development."

The blanket term of metacognition and the fuzzy boundaries... an important issue to tackle... what deserves the meta tag?

Metacognition and the mechanism of change and development.

Greeno & Riley (1987). Processes and development of understanding

Got this one done with the wind of typhoon Soulik howling on the outside all night... (God bless!)

What this paper is to me... a means to explain the hopefully differential degree of ability for me to detect and work with my psychotic symptoms (e.g., delusion) in my much younger years such as right around the onset and now.  All about my level of understanding of my symptoms.

Greeno, James G., & Riley, Mary S. (1987). Processes and development of understanding. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 289-313). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Process of understanding

Theoretical understanding

"Many cognitive procedures, at least to some extent, are based on general principles.  Many of the capabilities that are referred to as understanding relate to an individual's knowledge of such principles." For instance, do children's ability to count things correctly reflect their understanding in principles of number and quantity?" (p. 290-291)

• Explicit knowledge: Can you verbally state the principle and make explanations?  Whatever it is, I absolutely can't do it in Martian though might not be able to do it in any other languages either.
• Conformity: Does the performance conform to a principle?  There is this memorable exam that I took in junior high school.  I got a entire set of questions wrong.  For reasons unknown, for the entire section, I put down the correct answers (e.g., cuckoo bird) instead of the codes denoting the correct answer (e.g., a, b).
• Implicit understanding: One criteria is the ability to judge whether specific performance examples are consistent with the principle. The other is whether one can solve problems in a domain different from the one in which the procedure was initially acquired. 
• Analogical use of structure: The ability to transfer learning in one domain to solve problems in another.
• Transfer: Greeno (1983) hypothesized that "transfer is enabled by a schema that can be used to represent the structure of problems in the domain where a procedure is learned, as well as in the domain of transfer."

Intrinsic understanding

"Understanding a problem solution or problem-solving procedure would consist of constructing a representation of the solution or procedure, including meaningful relations among the various steps of the solution or the various cocomponents of the procedure.  Understanding of this kind may be analoguous to metacognitive knowledge, consisting of strategies for performance." (p. 295)

Knowledge for planning:

• "In the solution of a problem, understanding includes realizing the sets of problem steps that fit together in meaningful units.  It seems reasonable to classify the 'phrases' of a problem solution as sets of steps are related to a single major goal of the problem, or that are the details of a single global action. Newell and Simon (1972) used the term 'episode' to refer to such units" and distinguishes between essential and inessential problem features.
• Knowledge used in planning is metacognitive because it's about cognitive procedures.  "The metacognitive knowledge does not necessary include explicit representation of general principle, nor is it necessarily accompanied by any self-conscious processes that would constitute awareness of the cognitive organization that it determines."

So very synchronous and perhaps synchronicity is everywhere... as long as you look towards its direction.  I haven't taken a trip outside of Taiwan for over a year since everything is forbidden by my head as long as I don't get the book out (whether it is psychotic a nonsensical question to ask since I am psychotic).  Leave the notion of moving on with my life along since it seems to be a goal far too huge.  Let's take one baby step at a time and assume the problem to be solved today, 7/13/2013, is to plan a trip abroad (though I do walk around at large tripping on a daily basis).  The steps it takes is simple: a) make sure I have enough money to last me-->b) get the book done to the extend that my head permits me to plan to go anywhere-->c) (once authorized) make tentative plans--> d) (upon my head's authorization) buy plane tickets and pack up-->e) Go.

The biggest issue in this plan is part b (and of course a as well since Washington is very important) since part b was composed of multiple episodes each with their own subgoals and the steps it took to accomplish them given the constraints of my entire existence.  With what takes place in part b and what it might take to reach part c, how does the plans unfold?  As the sense of knowing, which could be called intuition, or delusions... an episode after another episode.  I can work on pushing the readings and writing through while living my life.

Does it mean that ying ying mei dai zi my life as an unemployed affords no nothing?  I am nothing.  The book might not sell too many copy.  Yet, I guess, I have the intent to contribute; I made my attempts to contribute and went through the whole 9 yards to get it done.  Whether anyone can get anything from it?  La forza. 

Something interesting about the notion of planning for me is that it requires the knowledge about how Is ams in order to move on with mes, myselves and Is... 

Though... looking at it from a different perspective... I surely won't be claiming that the theme song of my life is I've never been to me.. lol



(Speaking of tangential thinking... how on earth did the 3-paragraph section on Knowledge for Planning lead to all them words?! 8-O lol)

Integrated performance

Music example: "It seems reasonable to hypothesize that the understanding that results from practice includes appreciation of relationships within the piece that were not appreciated initially. (p. 296)
Algebra example: Practice result in the development of general schema, which might be "responsible for the ability to perform planfully, and therefore would constitute understanding." (p. 297)

Development of ability to understand

Theoretical framework and issues

Problem schemata and action schemata

Differences between younger and older children in problem-solving...

• Lack of action schemata? 
• Failure to activate the action schemata (three possible reasons ) 

1. not understanding the scenario (e.g., text comprehension issue) 
2. lack of connection between the problem and the action schemata 
3. lacking the problem schemata 

The authors were in favor of option 1 and 3... "regarding the problems analyzed, is that younger children have the general procedures needed to solve the problems, but the lack ability to coherently represent problem information." (p. 299)

What is the problem?  Identifying delusions for instance... I who didn't "know" delusions relating to supernatural power could not identify it. (Think I just mentioned similar comment yesterday... might be saturating what limited my existence can offer)

Evidence for action schemata

Young children's ability to answer how many birds won't get a worm but inability to answer the question of "how many more"?

Birds and worms

"An alternative interpretation of young children's difficulty is that they have not yet acquired procedures for representing the information in the "How many more?" problem, including the meaning of the question; that is, they do not yet have the schema for comparison needed to form representations that include comparative relationships between quantities. If it is assumed that the restatement of the question enables children to activate procedures for forming corresponding sets and counting the remainder without forming an intermediate schematized representation of the problem information, this interpretation is consistent with Hudson's finding." (p. 301-302)

Being able to perform one-to-one correspondence but not comparison.  An alternative way to look at how I could not catch my delusions about supernatural power.  

Analysis of developmental states

More about schema...

Conclusion

"the major developmental changes that enable older children to perform successfully is acquisition of procedures of understanding that construct representations of problem situations." (p. 311)
"Hudson's findings... show that a change in the wording of problems greatly facilitates young children's ability to solve them." (p. 311)
"older children have procedures for constructing general representations of quantitative relationships.  These schematized representations mediate between problem texts and problem-solving procedures.  They represent general structural features of problem situation."

Glaser & Pellegrino (1987). Aptitudes for learning and cognitive processes

For me, this chapter is about the development of symptom identification and intervention.  It's about pattern recognition... how symptoms are identified and how we can get better in identifying our symptoms... and intervene.

At the same time, from the perspective of the symptoms, don't we psychotics see linkages in the most irrelevant things? 


Glaser, Robert, & Pellegrino, James W. (1987). Aptitudes for learning and cognitive processes. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 267-288). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"It has been argued that rule induction process are similar to those demanded in concept formation, and that they are related to a major form of human problem solving that results in the acquisition of knowledge."

One major task involved in delusions is problem-solving... the emerging of ever-ending problems...  The learning to cope is simply the transfer of problem-solving demands in one dimension to another. 

The authors presented the following research on inductive reasoning:
Series completion problems: Training worked
Analogical reasoning problems: The authors addressed research three interrelated elements that appear to differentiate high- and low-skill individuals in analogical reasoning test task, including memory load, procedural knowledge of task constraints, and organization of an appropriate conceptual knowledge base.

• Figural analogie (memory load)

Good old cognitive load.

• Verbal analogies (procedural constraints)

"... because they involve increasingly detailed specification of the analogical rule and/or consideration of alternative conceptualizations of the rule, interactive solutions require more extensive processing than conceptually driven solutions... when low-ability individuals use the analogical solution procedure, they tend, more often than high-ability solvers, to evoke a sequence of processes corresponding to initial identification of the analogical rule; however, they do not subsequently modify that rule.  Although low-ability solvers are also capable of solving items interactively, they do so less often than high ability solvers.  On more difficult items, which are less likely to be solvable in the conceptually driven mode, low-ability solvers exhibit performance that violates task constraints." (p. 279)

"Skilled analogy solvers are characterized by more knowledge of task constraints, and by the ability to develop an understanding of the analogical rule in response to the item stem, the relationship involved, and the response options.

Sounds like a good way to explain the (hopefully) differences between how I handle my psychosis 10 years ago and today.

• Numerical analogies (Knowledge base influences)

"This knowledge correlates with and predicts analogy performance.  High-ability subjects use their knowledge of abstract number relationships to constrain the domain of permissible operations; this knowledge based determines the appropriate use of strategies. " (p. 285)

Though it might be too far a transfer... I think (or hope ) I am doing better in making use of the knowledge about my symptoms than, say, 10 years ago.  More practices and more unfortunately acquired knowledge about the behavior of my symptoms, I guess.

Implications

Training on:

• Training on mental processing skills can provide better methods for searching memory and elaborating connections, which would facilitate storage and retrieval.
• Training on knowledge strategy can help improve the ways a knowledge base is recognized and manipulated.  When highly skilled individuals learn something new or undertake a new problem of induction, they engage a highly organized structure of appropriate facts and relationships, and associated procedures and goal constraints.  Skilled individuals are skilled because of their knowledge of both the content involved in a problem and the procedural constraints of a particular problem form, such as inductive or analogical reasoning.

Chi, Michelene T.H. (1987). Presenting knowledge and metaknowledge: implications for interpreting metamemory research

An interesting article making arguments on why some meta stuffs aren't really meta.  At the same time, isn't it true that the outcome of meta-processes can be encoded for later recall... the conversion of meta to non-meta?  Donno.  Just a thought.

Chi, Michelene T.H. (1987). Presenting knowledge and metaknowledge: implications for interpreting metamemory research. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 239-266). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

A framework of representing knowledge

"The author borrows heavily from the work of Anderson (1976), Greeno (1978), and Norman and Rumelhart (1975); however, any deviations and modifications of their work are the results of intuition and preconceived biases, suitable for explaining developmental findings." (p. 245)

Domain knowledge

Domain knowledge can take two forms: declarative and procedural.

Declarative knowledge is factual in nature...  "Declarative knowledge can be represented in terms of a semantic propositional network, where a concept (such as a dog) may be represented as a node, and links specify the relationships among the nodes... The degree of complexity of the semantic network should correspond to the amount, elaborateness, and organization of a child's declarative knowledge." (P. 245-246)

"Procedural knowledge is knowledge about how to do things.... Furthermore, procedural knowledge can be represented as a set of production rules, which are condition-action pairs."  (p. 246-247)

Strategy

The notion of strategies seem to have a special status in developmental research because "they have he property of being general and global, rather than domain-specific."  P2 in the above figure is an example of a strategy--a general procedure applicable to different domains.

The four properties of a strategy: (p. 247)

1. General and domain-independent
2. Like all procedures, it has a goal
3. Like all procedures, it can have several components
4. The number of strategies in memory is small (there should be fewer number of P2 than P3-P9).

The implications of the above definition: (p. 248)

• Strategies might have the properties of procedural knowledge and they are represented in the same way as production rules.
• The separation between strategies and procedural knowledge is artificial but serve a purpose.
• Studies have been conducted on the training of strategies for the purpose of generalization.  

The observed failure to transfer might be due to the fact that what was taught was domain-specific procedures (e.g., P3, P4) rather than domain-independent strategies (e.g., P2).  Younger children need to be told explicitly to use the strategies learned and it could be due to a problem in the encoding of goals because when the goal is missing, the procedure might not fail to be activated.  The reason why older children learn to learn and adopt the strategies faster than younger children could be due to the fact that they already have different versions of the a production (e.g., P3, P4, P5) in memory and it makes it easier to acquire the general form, the strategy production (P2).

A good way of looking at my coping with psychosis during the onset, right after the onset, and now.  Can't say getting all that good though I guess and I hope I am getting better learning to cope.  Sort of like, you don't know it's delusion, you don't know that you have to intervene.  Whether the intervention is procedural knowledge or a strategy is not really an issue for me.  Though, shall strategies be considered as a more general form and content-independent of production rules, it surely would be harder to extract a strategy rule if you do not have enough procedural knowledge.

Metaknowledge

What is metaknowledge?

• The straightfoward way-->metaknowledge is cognitive knowledge and metamemory would be memory knowledge.
• The more complex way-->second-order knowledge.

Meta-delcarative knowledge (p. 249-250)

1. Meta as a reference to cognitive knowledge?  "Meta-declarative knowledge would be factual knowledge about cognition like factual knowledge about any other domain.
2. Meta refers to second-order knowledge, or a function? In this case, "meta-declarative knowledge would be the same thing as a procedure or a strategy... Hence, theoretically, meta-declarative knowledge would take the same form as either procedural knowledge or strategies." For instance, how much do I know about animals?  To answer the question, you have to search or activate relevant nodes in the semantic network and make assessment thereafter.  "The complexity of the processes needed to answer meta-declarative type of questions depends on whether or not the question addresses a prestored declarative knowledge, or if a procedure is needed to assess existing declarative knowledge about cognition."

Let's replace it with this question... "Is this delusional?"  And... remember... delusions morph and don't always appear in the same fashion... though contains certain "delusional" attributes, which should make the notion of delusion detection something mighty interesting...

Meta-strategies: (P. 250-251)

"Again, there are two ways to represent meta-strategic knowledge.  One way is direct prestored declarative knowledge"... For instance, "Do you remember better than your friends?" In this case, the term meta is used only to refer to knowledge about strategies or activities of remembering."

"Alternatively, one can also view meta-strategic knowledge as second-order operations.  In this case, meta-strategy would be a rule that evaluates another rule (See P1).  If it's the first time you encounter the question, "Do you remember better than your friends?"  There is no restored answer... and one has to engage in assessments to perform evaluations at two levels: the level of the output of each individual memory strategy and the level of the sum of all the available strategies for remembering.

"Is this delusional?" Chances are... though delusions are fairly similar in certain principles, it's highly unlikely for them to be the same. Thus, the lower degree of likelihood for you to find a stored answer.  Yet, the head must have some interesting way of conducting pattern matching when performing delusion detection... possibly... partial identification of attributes of delusions for the sake of efficiency.

"However, because meta-strategies can themselves be represented as production rules, they are not different in form of quality from other production rules, such as strategies and procedural knowledge.  Hence, there is agreement with Flavell's (1979) assumption that 'metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences differ from other kinds only in their content and function, not in their form or quality'." (p. 251)

Meta-procedural knowledge: (p. 251)

Similar to meta-strategies, meta-procedural knowledge are rules that evaluate other domain-specific rules.  

Summary and discussion

Interesting notion...

"Beyond these rules, there should be a set of executive rules, controlling the entire system's on going activities (whether the system is a child, a program, or an adult).  Executive rules are analogous to an interpreter than determines the sequence of processes to be executed.  A variety of processes, such as monitoring one's own state of processing and allocating ongoing attention, has now been given a new status of meta-processes... Why these executive processes have been given a new name, other than the possibility that they control memory processes, is unclear." (P. 254) 

Metamemory research

This is a somewhat random selection [the research], simply because it is nearly impossible to be exhaustive for a paper of this length.  The selected examples serve to illustrate the complexity and fuzziness of some of the metamemory research.

Metaknowledge of person variable

Whether or not an age effect can be observed (p. 254)

1. total amount of related experience
2. whether greater amount of experience can produce a more accurate and robust assessment
3. the consistency of early encounters

"For example, if a minimal amount of experience is sufficient to produce a robust assessment, then a stable knowledge of person variable could probably be reached early in life; consequently no age effect will be observed." (p. 254)

Why the onset is inevitable?  Why the occurrences of reinstitutionalization and the institutionalizable grade of mental state?

Sensitivity

"a young child has in memory only production rules that approximate the final mature rules (such as P6), but not the mature rules themselves (such as P2).  Therefore, the overt request to memorize is not a sufficient cue to trigger the strategic rule P2 and other similar rules."

"Sensitivity may reflect only a deficit in existing cognitive rules.

Would say I agree with it.  Why did I get institutionalized the second time?  The delusions in the onset was about fame and wealth etc.  The delusions in the second major episode... the highlight... the Appocalypse.  The P2 actually was not mature enough since it ain't got no idea about delusions associated with Appocalypse etc.  You can't ientify what you don't know and thus failure to intervne (regardless the effectiveness of interventions.)

Monitoring and checking

Based on the study of expert and novice physicist, the author came up with the argument that "younger children's inability to accurately monitor their current state of knowledge (such as preparedness for recall), as well as their inadequate allocation of attention, is attributed to an inadequacy in part of their domain knowledge related to the stimulus items, rather than strictly underdeveloped monitoring process." (p. 260)

Check is a notion related to monitoring.  In the physicist study, by mistake, "the numerical value for one of the known variables in the problems was too large, so that the actual numerical solution was unusually small.  Guess what the outcome might be... of course... results indicated a difference between expert and novice.

"One possible interpretation for such results is that over years of experiences, the experts have acquired schemata of problem types, and one of the slots of a schema is potential values of the solution.  Hence, when a value does not correspond to the range dictated in the schema, it signals to him that he should doublecheck... checking is totally an outcome of the presence of the relevant domain knowledge in memory, and not a meta-strategy that some individuals have and others do not." (p. 261)

As I grow older in my psychotic age, guess I also started to acquire schemata of problem types with one of the associated schema as the potential solution.... therefore... defects and workarounds.

Summary and discussion

Sensitivity and executive processes such as monitoring and checking need not be called meta.  With the personal variable type of study, it's difficult to tease apart what is meta and what is not.

General discussion

"It was conjectured that the reason that children may not, for example, check their solution as readily as adults, reflects not so much deficits in their control or monitoring processes, but rather, the lack of a relevant schema in the declarative knowledge base to tell them that the answer was inappropriate." (p. 263)

The little relation between memory and metamemory performance? A definition problem. (p. 263-264)

• A variety of meta-type tasks are really not meta, therefore, one would not expect performance on thoses tasks to correlate with memory performance
• metaknowledge is not unlike knowledge of any other domain, and it is conceivable that knowledge of cognition and knowledge of noncognitive domains develop simultaneously and independently, so that one need not bear one the other
• the only kind of processes that must have some relation to cognition are those that evaluate other strategies or rules.

Kuhl, Julius. (1987). Feeling versus being helpless: Metacognitive mediation of failure-induced performance deficits.

Kuhl, Julius. (1987). Feeling versus being helpless: Metacognitive mediation of failure-induced performance deficits. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 217-235). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

In this chapter, the author introduced an explanation of learned helplessness-- the action control factor.

The role of selective attention: "... performance should be facilitated when attention is focused on action-related information.  Conversely, when attention focuses on state-related information, the performance of an intended action should be impaired.  The degree of state-orientation may mediate failure-induced performance deficits.  Subjects may be preoccupied, focusing on the state created by the failure experience, trying, for instance, to explain why they failed or trying to analyze their own emotional state...  A person who is preoccupied with analyzing his or her state may show impaired performance on any type of test, burn the dinner..." (p. 218)

Action-control

Action control is considered as a metacognitive process for two reasons: (P. 221)

1. It organizes and controls cognitive operations so as to maximizes the congruence between intention and performance.
2. Action control relies heavily on knowledge about the effective of cognitive operations to achieve the objective.

"The degree of action-control aroused in a particular situation may vary between the two extremes called state-orientation and action orientation.  The following illustrates the differential patterns between people who are state-oriented and action-oriented.  What the charts showed were the rank correlations between the degree of intentional commitment and reported time spent on activities calculated for the state-orientation and action-orientation groups separately. Essentially, the action-orientation group do what they say.

The following chart depicts the metacognitive model of action-control... almost like

f(state-orientation)+f(action-orientation)=1 with 1 denoting capacity.

kind of connotation.  Though not quite the same, it reminds me of monitor and control as per Nelson & Narens (1990) and Shimamura (2008)... (unless this is also how the model should be read in Nelson & Narens (1990) and Shimamura (2008)?  Donno.)

p. 222

Of course, differential behavioral outcome might be observed as a result of the wrestling between the proneness to state- and action-orientation.  As was found in a study conducted on participants who underwent a hernia operation, state-oriented subjects did seem to engage in more state-related behavior while action-oriented subjects, action-related behavior.

p. 225

Action-control and learned helplessness

"According to this model, repeated exposure to uncontrollable outcomes first increases a (metacognitive) tendency towards action-orientation that is replaced by a tendency towards state-orientation when a perception of uncontrollability has developed... State-orientation may interfere with optimal cognitive functioning, especially when the task is complex enough to demand full attention..."

"in contrast to traditional helplessness theory, a distinction is made between motivation for the training task and motivation regarding the test task." (p. 229)

jump to finding of the study...

"significant performance deficit could be found only when there was reason to believe that subjects were state-oriented, either as a result of experimental induction of or as a result of a disposition towards state-orientation.  (p.232)

Implication... for someone showing "impaired performance in a variety of situations because he or she is too much concerned with explaining the problem.  An attributional therapy that reinforces this state-oriented attitude towards the problem may even aggravate the disorder.  An alternative approach may focus on helping the client shift his or her attention away from the possible causes of the problem, which may never be found with absolute certainty.  Instead the client should be encouraged to think about possible ways of changing the situation; giving up unattainable goals and focusing on new attainable goals.  The client may learn that thinking about change is more helpful than ruminating about the present state and its causes." (p. 233)

I like the notion of "learning to change" since taking the learning paradigm, it gives hope.

The author's recommendation also reminded me of the notion (plausible) that talk therapy might not work too well for people with thought disorder.  If you read through the mumble jumbles I have compiled since 2005 up to today, 2013, you might get a gist of how state-oriented I am... be it the contribution of neurosis or psychosis.  The never-ending self-monitoring and analyses... albeit the 99.9 % principle, I am almost 99.9% sure that ain't no body could have monitored and analyzed me as intensive as I have... in worlds shared by the others or not.  8-O lol

Could state-oriented analyses be paralyzing?  Sure... be it in depression or in psychosis.  Though from the perspective of psychosis... hate to put it this way, yet... unless you are a delusional, you can't possibly image how impairing it is to be engaging in the never-ending analysis on how do they get the update on my moves and thoughts, for instance. The worst thing is... the state is constantly getting updated and you are stuck in the state-oriented analyses because you are constantly analyzing new states... though the same... What makes it even worst is that... there is no nothing else but resorting to the meds... 

Yet, is the meds the only way to induce change to the situation?  Could there be additional means to help the psychotics find ways to think out of their state?  Or, what it be like... the thinking of cognitive states affords the backbone knowledge for the thinking of the metacognitive states.  What it be like... it's just the rite of passage... you can't escape the inevitable though you have the option to take the action to benefit from the inevitable propensity for state-orientation and use it to devise actions for change.

Though... the reality is that I think my years of working with my mental health professionals help big time... though undocumented and unrecorded (without proof)... I learn to see develop my ability to work with my psychotic symptoms both at the cognitive and metacognitive levels... When getting out of bound, they give me feedback to help me recalibrate.  Though... it has taken a whole lot of time and work, and I ain't got no way to prove to myself whether I really have learned something or not with n=1, a delusional, especially since you can't catch your delusions... at least not 100% (something else I am quite sure albeit the 99.9 % principle, again).

Therefore, the burden of proof (for my mumble jumbles) is and has never been on me... lol

Paterson & Seligman (1987). Helplessness and attributional style in depression

After reading this article, one thing came to my mind... if you can figure out the process of becoming, you might be able to figure out how to disrupt the process of becoming, loosen its structure, and hopefully, get it at least partially deconstructed.

The purposes of the models and theories... I guess... for a good reason.

An interesting question I had... other than I am also neurotic and started my mental career as a depressive... what good does the attributional style in depression do in my pursuit to understand my psychosis?  After my disordered head got my head all fried because it insisted on my squeezing something out of my overdosed head and not allowed me to leave it like it...  I came up with the following... 

Self

• Locus of control: I reverted the Apocalypse... didn't I? 8-O
• Limelight effect: Who is being watched by all beings in all multiverses?
• Impact: People couldn't stop hearing the thoughts being broadcasted from my head.

Though not exhaustive, the three capture the attributional style under the self-dimension.  The manifestation of the attributional pattern is dependent on the mental state.  Is the attributional style the precursor of psychosis?  Donno.

Paterson, Christopher, & Seligman, Martin E.P. (1987). Helplessness and attributional style in depression. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 185-215). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Original helplessness theory: Uncontrollable events-->expectancy of response-outcome independence-->interference with learning

The reformulation

"people have a characteristic attributional style or a tendency to make similar sorts of attributions about a variety of events." (p. 190)

"Theoretically, a depressive attributional style is one that habitually attributes bad events to internal, stable, and global causes." (p. 190)

"Attributional=> pertaining to the causal inferences made by people.

As a psychotic, I surely have the attributional style to constantly see everything is about me.

The authors described a study comparing the attributional style among the depressives, surgical patients and schizophrenics using the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), which required the participants to indicate what the causes of events might be.  The hypothetical events include good events such as "you do a project which is highly praised" and negative events such as "you meet a friend who acts hostilely towards you."  The participants were also asked to respond to questions aiming to assess the internal, stable and global dimensions.

The following as the results.

This study absolutely caught my attention because it included the psychotics as part of the study and led me to wonder how the mental state of the psychotics might have an impact on the study result.  Take the good event for instance "you do a project which is highly praised" for example, referencing the way I thought when institutionalized or right out of the hospital (that kind of mental state), the first thing that would come into my paranoid delusional mind with grandiosity might be things like... "The institution is studying Me. They are testing me and observing Me.  How would they use this information on me?" Were I a participant, I wonder worldviews like this might bias my response pattern since it might be perceived by me as a mind game... sort of like 007 kinda thing... Also, however well written a question might be... if we could see David Letterman on TV and think that he is talking to us, we surely have the potential to read the questions and interpret it as something else, I guess.  What all these boils down to, I guess, is... with the responses, are you sure the questions psychotics respond to are the ones you posed?

Nowadays, life is simpler for there is only one way to think... who gives a rat's ass about me?  Responding to  questionnaires?  The feel.

Would the outcomes be similar?  Donno.

Love the following wording:

"In order to find the answer, it is suggested the controversy be moved from arm chair or the couch to an explicit empirical domain." (p. 197)

"... changes in attributional style should accompany successful therapy for depression... To date, as a consequence of therapy, changes in attributional style have not been documented; however, there is some case history evidence regarding such changes." (p. 201)

I have lived through many a night when I prayed to God to let me wake up not... Ya... that is very depressive. (Changes in depressive symptom level).  In terms of the dimensions of internality, stability, and globality, confounded by my grandiosity, I decided to always treat all success as luck and all failures as my bad.  Interpersonal issues like "you meet a friend who acts hostilely towards you"... somebody slept on the wrong side of the bed.

If attricutional pattern can be shaped, whether it can be changed or not, I surely hope I can come up with something else to counterbalance its effect.

"The learned helplessness model does not claim that dispositional attributional style will always override situational determinants of attributions, so attention must be paid to whether or not the situational constraints were weak enough to allow attributional style to do its dirty work." (p. 206)

Forget about the issue of whether attributional style is stable... even if it is... it's nothing like dooms day since situation, situation, situation... and aren't we the ones creating our own situations (So they say about the probabilistic quantum world-- up to a certain degree, of course)!

"The learned helplessness model assumes that people operate logically with their attributional premises; however, a great deal of recent research has demonstrated that normative models of information processing are sometimes inaccurate descriptions of what people actually do." (p. 209)

Thank God.  Now I feel less ab-normal since there seem to be some great amount of variance within the norm of the norm.  8-O 

Heckhausen, Heinz. (1987). Causal attribution patterns for achievement outcomes: individual differences, possible types and their origins

Texts in blue are my notes/thoughts.

Heckhausen, Heinz. (1987). Causal attribution patterns for achievement outcomes: individual differences, possible types and their origins. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 143-184). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Achievement motivation and personality variables

1. The valence of incentive for success or failure
2. Personal standards of excellence (level of aspiration)
3. Attribution pattern (The focus of this paper)

Intraindividual asymmetry of attribution patterns

An interesting attribution pattern

	Failure	Success
Self	External var.	Self
Other	More impartial	More inpartial
Me	All my bad.  Shut the front door and work on it. Get done with that self issue... move on to something else a million a blue moon ago already	Every dog has its day… Got lucky… lol

Interesting notion about issues such as low self-concept...

Sure, I remembered the time when I didn't want to work too hard in high school because I knew if I didn't work hard and didn't do well, I could always blame it on not working hard... considered by me as an external factor since it would not be an indicator of my personal attribute... like not too bright.  That was some mechanism helping me to sustain my self-concept until the time comes when I came face to face with its outcome-- I was the top (counting from the bottom) in the first mock exam for the national joint entrance exam.  A catch 22... were I to claim that I made a lot of effort, what it would mean is I have low ability...   Oops. (And, yes, I started my mental career from neurosis before progressing into psychosis etc.)

It also reminds me of the phase of deconstruction that started in 2007 and still goes on and on since I could find figure out what I have to deconstruct... The phase of deconstruction that started about 2 months before I went back to the cuckoo's nest... when I had no body, no head, no nothing other than all them stuffs piling up in my room acquire through my ebay era.  Today, do I have low self-concept?  Don't think so... if not simply donno.  Maybe I don't quite give a bag of beans about myselves (a key to my survival) while, be honest, I really am nothing. lol 8-X Negative self-concept?  Ain't no nothing classic while ain't no nothing either, I guess?  Some out-of-whack developmental outcome? 8-O

"Recent findings are surprising, they show the degree to which individuals will hold to a preconceived notion even though it has been disproved by the facts (Ross & Lepper, 1980).  Can this phenomenon be explained by the assumption that an attribution pattern acquired in a earlier developmental phase is subsequently transformed into a mode of information processing that already distorts perception at a pre-attentive level?  Does this become an attribution pattern incapable of self-correction? Even though the individual has had positive experiences that contradict the negative self image, does this attribution pattern become "immune" to modification? Or, on the contrary, does attribution that reduce self-esteem constitute a cognitive process motivated by the intention to avoid long exposure to achievement situation and the self-evaluation entail?  So far, no conclusive statement can be made as to which of these explanations might be correct." (P. 146)

Attributional error: "Alloy's and Abramson's conclusion was that depressives are 'sadder but wiser'"  because they were able to draw a surprisingly accurate distinction between the efficacy of their own undertakings and chance events while non-depressive tend to overestimate their ability.

Almost sounding like the classic Taiwanese song... 海海人生... 8-O


Since I started my mental career as a depressive, could it have helped my attempt to approximate reality? 8-O

"It may appear paradoxical that of all people it should be these problem groups who attain a more realistic self-evaluation.  But is a realistic self-evaluation "normal" and helpful?  Is not a certain measure of self-esteem-enhancing self-deception "normal," or at least necessary, for one to cope with the problems of life?  Is such self-deception not essential to prevent one from giving up hope too soon in the pursuance of the many goals that are not easily attained?  Does self-deception not enable one to actually to achieve more than could be expected when starting an undertaking?" (p. 148)

Excellent question... as one of the queens of self-deception... such shall I refrain since, once one step in... no telling whether I can pull myself out.  At the same time, the work I put into getting the book done and what it takes to pull it through... Is it the self-deception mechanism that sustains it by making me feel that I can retire to sell my bubble tea after it is done?  Don't think so... I hope so... and knowing how "futurisitc" I can be as a psychotic, I entertain not--the future. Not to mention that... if my disordered thoughts want me to get the book done, ain't no nothing could stop it... not even the meds.  Might as well get done with it so that it won't be like a tail that I can not shake off.  lol sigh

Interindividual contrast in attribution patterns: convergence of research domains

1. Internal versus external reinforcement control
2. Depression
3. Learned helplessness in schoolchildren: Dweck cited repeatedly--mastery orientation.
4. Achievement motives: Success vs. failure
5. Self-concept: "Children low in self-esteem did not attribute their success outcome to high expenditure of effort but rather to good luck... (Nicholls, 1976)" C'est moi!  Oops la!  
6. Sex differences: Boys--attribution to motivation while girls--attribution to ability=> differential environmental impact on the development of attributional pattern even with the "same" environment.

The author further presented several types of attribution patterns and their emergence.

Attribution pattern=>schema loaded with bias?

Compione, Joseph C. (1987). Metacognitive components of instructional research with problem learners.

Compione, Joseph C. (1987). Metacognitive components of instructional research with problem learners. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 1-16). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"Metacognitive work has reawakened an interest in the role of consciousness, or awareness, or understanding, in thinking and problem-solving." (p. 117)

"Strategy training, even on the training task, did not eliminate differences between retarded and nonretarded children: the implication is that there are other sources of comparative differences that remain 'untreated'" (p. 122-123)

The multiple times when I was in institutionalizable grade and the second major psychotic episode after the onset... Why would the condition get to institutionalizable grade?  One simple answer I know is... underestimation.  La  forza... even the copegeny and the extents of its effect are dependent on the forces of the nature.  Bow in front of it.

"Will the subject continue to execute the activity when the experimenter/instructor is absent or ceases prompting; that is, will the activity be maintained?  Will the subject apply what he or she has learned to novel but related problems; that is, will the effects of training be generalized effectively?" (p. 123)

"Failure to produce strategies or to transfer them might be seen as reflecting a general metacognitive deficit." (p. 124)

Working with psychosis entails a constantly process of solving novel problems.  Sure, the problem might be "the same" though the form might seem different.  Question-- why do failure in the application of coping strategies arise? Why do we get so psychotic and get reinstitutionalized?

"Excedutive decision making also presented difficulty... it was found that retarded children do not tent to monitor their state of learning accurately."

Stating of the basic... "ignore."  How many decades would it take for a psychotic to fully master the art of ignoring if it ever happens?

"... the question of the generality/specificity of problem-solving skills... General skills canno solve problems by themselves but may provide access to the more specific and powerful skills that are necessary for problem solving.  In this context, the questions are: Are (some of) the self-regulatory mechanisms general ones?  If so, can they be taught alone or only in combination with the more specific skills to which they allow access?"  (p. 125)

The author provided a review on training research (p. 126-133)

• Knowledge alone
• Strategies plus knowledge
• Self-regulation
• Strategies plus regulation: for the less sohpisticated learners, the most effective condition was the most explicit training. The poorer students did not integrate the rules and self-management instructions for themselves; the needed explicit instruction in role control to maximize their performance  (therefore I need to explicate the tactics for myself).

Rote learning or not... there is a need for intrinsic motivation.  

The issue of integration--abstraction of one's own knowledge, strategies, training oneself to perform them, devising evaluation criteria, training oneself to apply the criteria to evaluation one's own performance.  No one can extract these knowledge and strategies for the psychotics... unfortunately.  It would be the psychotics' own decision to get some added values from the commonplace minor inconveniences in life or not.

"Poor learners are deficient in knowledge because of poor learning skills, in particular, the self-regulatory, executive mechanism... Providing the products of that processing (e.g., specific knowledge about the memory system) does not affect the underlying problems.  It is worth noting that an asymmetry is clearly possible.  For example, teaching subjects to monitor performance may well lead to the development of factual knowledge about the memory system (e.g., span limitations and strategy effectiveness)." (p. 135)

Question... did my background in human cognition help me cope?  At the same time, when the shrink told me that I was delusional, I thought he was part of the conspiracy theory.  

"... effective performance within some domain requires knowledge about the domain, specific procedures for operating within the domain, and more general regulatory processes that are task independent; slow learners experience problems in all three areas."  (p. 136)

Consider psychosis as a domain... it's no easy domain to learn.

"... making learners aware of themselves and of the availability and potential use of cognitive resources."

Kluwe, Rainer. (1987). Executive Decisions and Regulation of Problem Solving Behavior.

Kluwe, Rainer. (1987). Executive Decisions and Regulation of Problem Solving Behavior. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 31-64). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"There is no doubt that metacognition has a long history in cognitive psychology, especially in connection with assumptions concerning the function of the executive component in information processing system (Neisser, 1967; Reitman, 1965)." (p. 32)

"The attribution of metacognitive skills to the executive component of information processing system, is important in establishing the linkage between cognitive developmental research and cognitive psychology." (p. 33)

Thank you!  I was starting to think that my low-latent-inhibition head was building up delusions on the linkage between the two...

"... effortful cognitive processes, unlike automated processes, may vary in the efficiency of their organization and execution." (p. 34)

The process of knowledge retrieval is relatively effortless and can almost be automatic, which might be out-of-whack in me.  Therefore, the need to engage in the effortful antipsychotic cognitive processes... though not always efficient and/or effective.

"... in order to maintain cognitive activity, which is subject to emotionally and motivationally determined variation, the human information processing system needs executive decision." (p. 34)

Sounds like the author believed that the executive decision might be able to overpower the impact of emotion.

"Executive decisions are based, in part, on the availability of cognitive knowledge." (P.34)

You won't be able to learn to catch your own psychotic symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, delusions) until you have enough knowledge about them.

"Executive decisions aim at the acquisition of information about own ongoing cognitive activity and about the present state of own cognitive endeavor, as well as the transformation or maintenance of one's own cognitive ability and states." (p. 35)

Monitor and control

Hypothetical executive decisions have three features

• 1. determine how to solve a problem through building the selection, organization, and termination of cognitive processes.
• 2. applied to avoid costs (e.g., risk states, failure)
• 3. not always necessary

"Executive decisions may then be considered as stored rules for the control and regulation of cognitive activities during problem solving." (p. 35)

Speaking of production rules here... like...

If like delusion (subroutine) [condition]       
(Then apply suitable workaround (subroutine)
Else abort) [action]

The connections between states and actions for control and regulation are "acquired." (P.36)

Executive control for monitoring purposes: (P. 36-41)

• Classification: Can what you know help improving the monitoring of your own cognitive activity?  As of 1987, no study results indicated this connection

Looking at what's going on in the head and tell what the heck is going on, "Am I being delusional?"  

• Checking: Training on checking strategies helps and the transfer of these strategies to other situations were observed.  Training skills without feedback is not as useful as providing both.

How am I doing in negating/neutralizing the effects of the symptoms?

• Evaluation: The difference between checking and evaluation is in the "evaluation criteria" department.  Though... what are these criteria?

I guess, I did a mean job though not perfect in evaluating my mental state on Feb. 10th, 2008... 4 days before my institutionalization. 8-O lol sigh

• Anticipation/prediction: "Prediction of cognitive states and cognitive activities provides information about: the possible alternative options for problem solving; the possible sequences of solution steps; and the possible outcomes."

Guess I am psychic... 100% accuracy in the prediction that I will still be delusional tomorrow.  The anticipation of my not being able to escape the delusion etc... what to do (e.g., tactics) and possible outcomes-->be conservative to minimize risk.

"Executive regulation refers to decisions about the organization, effort, amount, course, and direction of one's own cognitive activity. Regulatory decisions do not necessarily imply a modification of the cognitive activity, they may also result in the maintenance and continuation of a particular cognitive enterprise." (p. 41)

Four of the hypothetical processes discussed by the author: (P. 41-46)

• Regulation of processing capacity: Bank it mostly if not all on risk management
• Regulation of what is processed
• Regulation of processing intensity
• Regulation of speed of information processing: In a world pushing speed (I do like terabit networks), slow the cognitive processing down since I am not rushing anywhere in my imaginary world... 8-O Something, thank God, children acquire first.  

"The increase of time and frequency of solution activities alone is not a sufficient predictor of performance.  It is assumed that one must search for certain patterns of regulatory activities that are associated with success or failure." (p. 61)

Psychotics have to figure out what works for them.  Not Swann's way, not my way... we all need to find our own way... unfortunately... so I suspect... Like what they say... "you can't pretend the outcome without going through the motions."