Description
Book SynopsisMetacognition refers to our awareness of our own mental processes, such as perceiving, remembering, learning, and problem solving. It is a fascinating area of research for psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, sociologists and philosophers.This book explores the variability of metacognitive skills across cultures, since a person''s decision to allocate effort, motivation to learn, sense of being right or wrong in perceptions, memories, and other cognitive tasks depends on specific transmitted goals, norms, and values. Across nineteen chapters, a group of leading authors analyze the variable and universal features associated with these dimensions, drawing on cutting-edge evidence.Additionally, new domains of metacognitive variability are considered in this volume, including those generated by metacognition-oriented embodied practices (present in rituals and religious worship), and culture-specific lay theories about subjective uncertainty and knowledge regarding natural or supernatural entities. It also documents universal metacognitive features, such as children''s earlier sensitivity to their own ignorance than to that of others, people''s intuitive understanding of what counts as knowledge, and speakers'' sensitivity to informational sources (independently of the way the information is linguistically expressed).The book is important reading for students and scholars in cognitive and cultural psychology, anthopology, developmental and social psychology, linguistics, and philosophy.
Trade ReviewJoëlle Proust and Martin Fortiers 2018 edited volume, Metacognitive Diversity: An Interdisciplinary Approach, proves to be what it says on the tin, with an extensive collection of papers examining the cultural influences that produce diversity in metacognition and mind-reading. Metacognitive Diversity is an impressive work, as the advanced praise testifies in its early pages, many by well-known names in the field. But the praise is warranted, both in the content and in the execution of the book. The papers situate the reader in an overview of the tendrils of metacognition, and effectively show the reach and breadth that its influence is felt across different areas of our lives, from politics to cultural taste to religious practise, including reconciling conflicting or redundant explanatory sources of how we understand the world. * Cory Marie Stade, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins, University of Southampton, Journal of Cognitive Historiography *
Table of Contents1: Joëlle Proust and Martin Fortier: Metacognitive diversity across culture: An introduction I. Introducing metacognition 2: Norbert Schwarz: Of fluency, beauty, and truth: Inferences from metacognitive experiences 3: Rolf Reber and Ara Norenzayan: Shared fluency theory of social cohesiveness: How the metacognitive feeling of processing fluency contributes to group processes 4: Bahador Bahrami: Making the most of individual differences in joint decisions II. How does metacognition develop: Cross-cultural studies 5: Paul Harris: Revisiting privileged access 6: Sunae Kim, Ameneh Shahaeian, and Joëlle Proust: Developmental diversity in mindreading and metacognition 7: Athanasios Chasiotis: The developmental role of experience-based metacognition for cultural diversity in executive function, motivation and mindreading III. Metacognition in communication 8: Anna Papafragou and Ercenur Ünal: The relation between language and mental state reasoning 9: Janis Nuckolls and Tod Swanson: Respectable uncertainty and pathetic truth in Amazonian Quichua speaking culture 10: Olivier Le Guen: Managing epistemicity among the Yucatec Mayas (Mexico) IV. Metacognitive regulation and self-concept 11: Veronica X. Yan and Daphna Oyserman: The world as we see it: The culture-identity-metacognition interface 12: Ulrich Kühnen and Marieke van Egmond: Learning: A cultural construct 13: Giovanni Bennardo: Cultural models in Tongan metacognition V. Metacognition within religious practices 14: Tanya Luhrmann: Prayer as a metacognitive activity 15: Uffe Schjødt and Jeppe Jensen: Depletion and deprivation: Social functional pathways to a shared metacognition 16: Martin Fortier: Sense of reality, metacognition and culture in schizophrenic and drug-induced hallucinations: An interdisciplinary approach VI. Do epistemic norms vary across cultures? 17: Stephen Stich: Knowledge, intuition and culture 18: Jonathan Mair: Metacognitive variety, from Inner Mongolian Buddhism to post-truth 19: Cristine Legare and Andrew Shtulman: Explanatory pluralism across cultures and development
