The Relationship Between Metacognitive Controlling And Attention Switching

General metacognitive ability including on-line metacognitive and off-line metacognitive. Due to the limits of the study on metacogntive method, previous studies on metacognitive controlling mostly adopted by the prediction that occurred before tasks and evaluation that occurred after tasks, focused on off-line metacognitive controlling, but ignored the role of the on-line metacognitive controlling. Diego thought that metacognitive and executive function have close relationships, they were all contained in the capability of the monitoring and control information processing. Norman and Shallice had put forward that attention switching was an important aspect of the executive function, attention switching can fully embody the process of monitoring and control in executive function. So the purpose of this study was divided into two parts. The first part aims to explore the relationships among off-line metacognitive controlling, on-line metacognitive controlling and metacognitive ability. The second is to explore the relationships between on-line metacognitive controlling and attention switching.The first part used experiment and measurement method, which was designed inside, asked 40 college students to complete Key Strike Task, Judgment of Learning and the Scale for College Students'Metacognitive Ability, explored the interrelationship of off-line, on-line metacognitive controlling, metacognitive ability and its sub-components. Results:(1) when on-line metacognitive controlling entered on the regression equation, off-line metacognitive controlling contributed to prediction of metacognitive sub-components was not significant, but on-line metacognitive controlling significantly; (2) off-line metacognitive controlling contributed to prediction of metacognitive ability was independent with on-line metacognitive controlling.The second part used Event-related potential (ERP) to reveal the interrelationship of metacognitive controlling and attention switching. This part contained two experiments. Experiment one:asked 20 students to complete simple attention switching tasks and difficult attention switching tasks, then asked participations to report their psychological activity and strategies adopted during completing the tasks. The coding score of participations reports as index. Then according to the index to distinguish one attention switch task has more metacognitive activity participation, and the other has more cognitive activity participation. Experiment two:let 20 students to complete simple attention switching tasks, difficult attention switching tasks and Key Strike Tasks, then compared the difference waves of on-line metacognitive controlling(used switch tasks volatility minus repeat tasks volatility on the detection points) with that of simple and difficult attention switching tasks(used switch tasks volatility minus repeat tasks volatility) by the fixed interval method of continuous measurement(The time interval is 200ms). Results found that:(1) at the points electrode of the Cz and FP1, the volatility of simple attention switching were significantly lower than that of difficulty attention switching in 200-400ms; (2) At the points electrode of the FP1,FP2,Fz and Cz, the differences between on-line metacognitive controlling and simple attention switching were significant in 0-400ms; but the differences between on-line metacognitive controlling and difficult attention switching were significant at the points electrode of Fz and Oz in 0-200ms. After 200ms,the differences were not significant at all points electrodes.Thus the study showed that:(1) off-line metacognitive controlling contributed to prediction of metacognitive sub-components was influenced by on-line metacognitive controlling, but contributed to prediction of general metacognitive ability was not influenced by on-line metacognitive controlling; the effect of off-line metacognitive controlling and on-line metacognitive controlling for metacognitive ability was independent.(2) The simple attention switching tasks were little influenced by the metacognitive controlling, these activities were more influenced by the cognitive activity; but the difficult attention switching tasks were more influenced by the metacognitive controlling.(3) On-line metacognitive controlling and the difficult attention switching tasks have meta-cognitive activity, however simple attention switching tasks were more object level of cognitive activity.