Designing for meta-cognition

There are two types of cognition. The first is normal cognition. This is the ability to retrieve knowledge from memory. When you are asked a question on a test and produce an answer, that’s a display of cognitive ability. The second type of cognition is meta-cognition the ability to know whether or not you know.

Have you ever been asked a question that you knew the answer to, but you couldn’t find the right word? This is called the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon and I’m sure we’ve all experienced it. You know that you know the answer, but you fail to produce it. If someone said an answer, you would know instantly if it was correct or not. In these cases meta-cognition exists without cognition.

In short, cognition is knowing, meta-cognition is knowing if you know or not.Both can exist together, but many times they don’t.

Therefore, web-sites designed for tapping meta-cognition helps it's users complete their tasks more effectively and efficiently and accomplish goals easily as there is less load on their memory. Because, recognizing is much simpler than recalling!