The Importance Of Cognition

According to Lopez (2014), cognition encompasses simple cognitive, problemsolving,and critical thinking strategies. Metacognition, which refers to reflecting and directingone’s own thinking, is often divided into two components of cognition: knowledge and regulation. Knowledge of cognition can be subdivided into: (1) declarative, which refers to knowing one’s characteristics as a learner, and in relation to performance, (2) procedural, denoting cognizance of one’s own repertoire of learning strategies, and (3) conditional, which relates to knowing why and when to use specific strategies.
On the other hand, regulation of cognition encompasses the processes of planning, monitoring, and evaluating. Planning refers to strategy selection and resource

According to this developmental framework, preschool children are realists, who equate believing with knowing. In other words, young children believe that everyone perceives the same thing, and all perceptions match external reality. By around age 4, however, children learn that some beliefs can be wrong. At this stage, called absolutism, children learn that two people’s beliefs can differ, but only because one person is right and the other is wrong. By adolescence, most people recognize that even experts can disagree on certain topics. At this point, many descend into multiplism (or complete relativism), where everything is subjective, no beliefs can be judged, and all opinions are equally right. By adulthood, many people will have learned to tolerate some uncertainty, while still maintaining that there can be better or worse opinions to the extent that they are supported with reason and evidence (evaluative epistemology). Kuhn and Dean argue that there is very little that needs to be done to encourage children to progress through the first three stages; rather, it is progression to the fourth stage that requires some instructional

From the age of 4 years on, memory verbs can be correctly applied to describe mental states. Between the ages of 6 and 11, there appear to be large gains in procedural metamemory knowledge. Prior to this time, children tend to over-estimate their memory performance, believing that performance is linked more strongly to effort than it actually is. By the age of 9 or 10, most children realize that task characteristics and use of strategies can make remembering more or less difficult, and students by the age of 12 can make more subtle distinctions in the differential effectiveness of various memory strategies. By this time, students are also able to self-regulate efficiently, in terms of allocating study time and attention. Development of strategic knowledge continues through adolescence and young adulthood, when students learn about interactions between memory variables, such as task characteristics, strategies, and