Dear Colleagues,

Working memory and metacognition are two constructs that receive a great deal of attention in the cognitive literature, yet research regarding the relationship between these two constructs is relatively new. Nelson and Narens (1990) proposed a framework to describe the relationship between metacognition and cognition. Cognition (the object level in the framework) refers to ongoing cognitive processes and the meta level contains a model of an individual’s understanding of the task at hand and the cognitive processing involved. The relationship between the two levels is based on the activities of monitoring and control. Monitoring processes function to evaluate the efficacy of task-level cognition, whereas control processes serve to allocate cognitive resources (e.g., attention and working memory). Metacognitive monitoring and control are also thought to be working memory demanding processes.

Working memory is defined in several ways (see Cowan, 2017). Two definitions germane to the relationship between working memory and metacognition come from Cowan (2017): “…the ensemble of components of the mind that hold a limited amount of information temporarily in a heightened state of availability for use in ongoing information processing.” And the maintenance of goals and sub-goals for ongoing processing while inhibiting distractions (see also Engle, 2002; Unsworth & Engle, 2007). From these definitions, it is inferred that metacognitive monitoring requires working memory to preserve task-relevant information and metacognitive control requires attentional resources from working memory.

This Special Issue aims to capture current theoretical and methodological developments in this field, including but not limited to the following themes:

• How are individual differences in working memory and metacognition related?
• Does training to improve metacognition transfer to working memory and vice-versa?
• What, if any, common processes, resources, or mechanisms do the two share?

If your paper does not address any of the proposed themes, but you believe it is aligned with the main concepts proposed in this Special Issue, please feel free to submit your manuscript.

References

• Cowan, Nelson. The many faces of working memory and short-term storage. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 24, no. 4 (2017): 1158–1170.
• Engle, Randall W. Working memory capacity as executive attention. Current Directions in Psychological Science 11, no. 1 (2002): 19–23.
• Nelson, T. O., and Narens, L. Metamemory: A theoretical framework and some new findings. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation. Academic Press: New York, NY, USA, (1990): Vol. 26, pp. 125–173.
• Unsworth, Nash, and Randall W. Engle. The nature of individual differences in working memory capacity: active maintenance in primary memory and controlled search from secondary memory. Psychological Review 114, no. 1 (2007): 104.

Please note that the “Planned Papers” Section on the webpage does not imply that these papers will eventually be accepted; all manuscripts will be subject to the journal’s normal and rigorous peer review process.

Dr. Christopher A. Was
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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• working memory
• metacognition
• metacognitive control
• metacognitive monitoring
• working memory demands