Metacognition is too imprecise a category: prefer to unbundle its phenomena

Metacognition is used as a label to describe a huge variety of processes: reflection, execution function, emotional response, feedback loops, etc. There are more formal academic definitions, but in general contexts, the term’s been polluted by imprecision.

I’m going to try to respond to this by “unbundling”: when I’m thinking about feedback and reflection, I’ll refer to those phenomena specifically, rather than to “metacognition.”

Last updated 2021-12-13.