Abstracts - Earli

Non-verbal indicators of metacognition in young childrenDavid Whitebread, University of Cambridge, United KingdomDeborah Pino Pasternak, University of Cambridge, United KingdomClaire Sangster, University of Cambridge, United KingdomA significant debate in the metacognition literature concerns the extent to which metacognitiveprocesses must be conscious and amenable to verbal articulation (Veenman et al, 2006). This is aconceptual issue, but one which also inter-relates very significantly with methodological concerns.Predominantly, metacognitive processes have been investigated by verbal means – for example,interviews, self-report questionnaires and think-aloud protocols – which, a priori, excludeunconscious and non-verbal processes and behaviours from consideration. There is also evidenceto suggest that these language-based methodologies under-estimate the metacognitive capabilitiesof young children (Whitebread et al, 2005). It is also argued here that a definition of metacognitiveprocesses which excludes unconscious or non-verbal processes and behaviours is unhelpful andmisleading. Recent work on the role of gesture in conceptual learning and strategy development(Goldin-Meadow, 2002; Pine, Lufkin & Messer, 2004), for example, suggests that consciousarticulation is only a part of the process of development in these areas. This paper, therefore,reports the identification and analysis of non-verbal indicators of metacognition in young childrenwithin naturalistic observational data. This data was collected within a 2 year study exploring thedevelopment of self-regulatory and metacognitive abilities in young children (aged 3-5 years) ineducational settings in the UK (English Nursery and Reception classrooms). 32 early yearseducators collected evidence of metacognitive abilities evidenced by children in their classesduring learning activities which were constructed to be ‘meaningful’ for the children and in otherways most likely to provoke metacognitive or self-regulatory behaviours. Gestures and other nonverbalindicators appeared most prevalently in the area of cognitive regulation. These includedindicators of monitoring, error-correction, controlling attention, planning and goal-directedbehaviour. The paper will present evidence of the relative incidence of these behaviours in the 3-5age range, and discuss their significance for theories of metacognitive development.Event-related potentials enable the real-time follow-up of response-inhibition processes inchildrenDénes Szűcs, University of Cambridge, United KingdomFruzsina Soltész, University of Cambridge, United KingdomDavid Whitebread, University of Cambridge, United KingdomValéria Csépe, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, HungaryDonna Bryce, University of Cambridge, United KingdomThe present paper reports initial studies which are part of a larger project aiming to examine therelationship between behavioural and neurophysiological measures of executive functioning, andbehavioural measures of early metacognitive skilfulness in children in the 3-9 age range. Thepaper addresses particularly the utility of the electrophysiological methodology of event-relatedpotentials (ERP) in the measurement of inhibition in 7-10 year old children. It is argued thatexecutive functions such as inhibition are functional precursors of metacognitive processes andthat ERP can make a significant contribution the undestanding of their development, asbehavioural measures are not adequate to distinguish the contribution of executive functions toperformance. The initial studies reported in this paper suggest that, at least in numericalprocessing, the basic cognitive processes (here related to numerical magnitude recognition), atwhat Nelson & Narens (1990) have described as the ‘object’ level, occur as fluently in children asin adults. However, the slower performance of the children compared to adults resulted from– 157 –