Scaffolded Memory and Metacognitive Feelings

Recent debates on mental extension and distributed cognition have taught us that environmental resources play an important and often indispensable role in supporting cognitive capacities. In order to clarify how interactions between the mind –particularly memory– and the world take place, this paper...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inReview of philosophy and psychology Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 135 - 152
Main Author Arango-Muñoz, Santiago
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.03.2013
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Cognitive Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Education
Epistemology
Memory
Metacognition
Neurosciences
Philosophy
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Science
Selection Problem
Internal Memory
External Resource
Semantic Memory
Cognitive Problem
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Summary:Recent debates on mental extension and distributed cognition have taught us that environmental resources play an important and often indispensable role in supporting cognitive capacities. In order to clarify how interactions between the mind –particularly memory– and the world take place, this paper presents the “selection problem” and the “endorsement problem” as structural problems arising from such interactions in cases of mental scaffolding. On the one hand, the selection problem arises each time an agent is confronted with a cognitive problem, since she has to choose whether to solve it internally or externally. How does she choose? On the other hand, when confronted with the internally or externally retrieved solution to a cognitive task, the subject has to decide whether to endorse the information. How does the subject decide whether to endorse it or not? The last section proposes a solution to each problem in terms of metamemory and metacognitive feelings. Metamemory evaluates memory each time the subject is confronted with a memory task and elicits either a positive or negative metacognitive feeling that guides the decision.
ISSN:1878-5158
1878-5166
DOI:10.1007/s13164-012-0124-1