Editorial: Advances in Metacognition and Reflection

Loren Marulis ^*

• Connecticut College, New London, United States

Editorial: [Advances in Metacognition and Reflection] Metacognition, first coined in the literature in the 1970s by John Flavell (Flavell, 1976) has been the focus of diverse disciplines (e.g., developmental, cognitive, and educational psychology, psychiatry, criminal justice) given its substantial, positive impact on development and learning in these fields. We know it is critical to greater and deeper learning and positive life outcomes (e.g., prisoner rehabilitation: Gois & Kane, 2025;academics: He et al., 2024;traumarelated treatment: Wiesepape et al., 2025) but we also know that it is rarely explicitly taught or fostered in formal or informal learning contexts and its development is rarely naturally occurring. In fact, in Flavell's unveiling of this term, which has kept us all busy for many decades since, he focused not on its abundance but on how it is most conspicuous (and negatively impactful) in its absence:Resnick and Glaser's research provides us with some striking examples of children failing to solve problems for which they possess the necessary solution procedures. They ought to solve these problems, we think, and yet they do not. Why not? My own guess on the matter originates in the expected place, namely, the area in which I have done most of my recent research and thinking. This area is the development of metacognition." (Flavell, 1976, p. 232).Though the official unveiling of the term "metacognition" is relatively new (Flavell, 1976;1979), there was a long previous history of reference to similar concepts such as reflection or introspection, traces of which can be seen as far back as the musings of Plato, Aristotle, and Simonides. John Locke, in 1690, introduced greater specification by distinguishing "reflection" as a more important and privileged form of thinking than other forms or "sensations" that do not tend to produce "long-lasting ideas" or a deep, reflective type of cognitive processing. Furthermore, early educators such as John Dewey had similar ideas. In his Pedagogic Creed (1897), Dewey stated his belief that the learning process would be disorganized and unsystematic (and thus not "educative") when left unexamined and that looking within one's psychological processes would lead to educative leverage (Dewey, 1897). It is likely that the influx of behaviorism to the field of psychology and education in the early 20th century is related to the hiatus in a focus on researching and theorizing about metacognition and reflection and, similarly, the resurgence in this focus shortly after the shift from behaviorism to cognition with the "cognitive revolution" of the 1950s. This shift resulted in consequential work by developmental psychologist Flavell and contemporaries. The zeitgeist was substantial and led to a greater convergence and alliance between the fields of psychology and education, making this body of literature more interdisciplinary and, ultimately, leading to greater contextualization, developmental appropriateness, and ecological validity in the study of metacognition. The rapidly-growing extant body of meta-reviews (e.g., Eberhart et al., 2024;He et al., 2024;Norman et al., 2019;Ohtani & Hisasaka, 2018) and primary research (e.g. Coughlin et al., 2022;Desoete & De Craene, 2019;Fu & Qi, 2025;Özçakmak et al., 2021) on metacognition and reflection provides robust evidence of their strong and unique predictive powers for important outcomes. Though metacognitive processes have been studied for at least five decades, it has only been in recent years that this examination has included infancy and early childhood, with initially promising and, in 2025, robustly positive and strong results (e.g., Chen et al., 2023;Gourlay et al.2020;Marulis & Nelson, 2021;van Loon & Roebers, 2024;Whitebread & Neale, 2020). This shift is not only developmentally inclusive but has critical implications for improving developmental and life trajectories based on the greater cognitive malleability in the early years of development. This Research Topic further elucidates early childhood metacognitive processes contributing to a comprehensive developmental understanding.Observing a set of family portraits, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional Sherlock Holmes, declaring himself an art connoisseur, remarked on their high artistic quality and, always the reflective thinker, continued on to analyze his assessment of the portraits with the following: "I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now." (Doyle, 1902, p. 93). Perhaps the more known, definitely more modern, and nonfictional instance of this concept occurred in 1964 with United States Justice Potter Stewart's explanation for how he determined (i.e., measured) obscene materials not protected under the First Amendment, which was essentially, "I know it when I see it." On first glance, these statements elicit something nebulous without a defined set of characteristics, yet the idea that "I" (seemingly referring to one with expertise or authority over a matter) will be able to reliably identify this "something" is also powerful. In the case of this Research Topic, the "something" of focus-advancing our understanding of metacognition and reflection-is particularly important given the consistent, robust, and positive impact these skills have across development and types of learning. The inherent challenge, thus, is to reverse engineer this knowledge into operationalized indicators. Since its debut into the literature, there have been calls for achieving a universally agreed-upon conceptualization of what "metacognition" is and is not. The challenges of this endeavor are as great as the rewards. On the one hand, the challenges and difficulties include contradictory findings and limited or lack of coherence, but on the other hand, are the benefits of convergent evidence across disparate methods and the emergence of a metacognition and reflection developmental trajectory. To this end, we have seen decades of rigorous research yet, in some ways, we are no closer to consensus. I suggest that we direct our attention to a new charge: Rather than focus on struggling to achieve full unity, we focus on achieving conditional (contingent and adaptive), calibrated (precise), and unified (internally consistent) conceptualizations of metacognitive processes. Collaborative efforts such as this Research Topic reflect this type of pivot and, I believe, represent metacognition for its complexities and strength.In the Editorial of a previous special issue on metacognition in the International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education (Desoete & Ozsoy 2009), capturing metacognition was compared to the murkiness of Scotland's Loch Ness monster. For argument's sake, we will posit that the authors of this Editorial were referring to the sightings (i.e., measurement) of the popular "monster" which are purported to have begun in 565 AD. In this case, it follows that there is something there; something being seen (previous scientific explanations include boat wakes and other sea creatures such as large eels or water birds and non-scientific explanations including mythology and intentional hoaxes) and perhaps some may say they would "know it when they see it".Metacognition was first (1970s) conceptualized as "thinking about thinking" or metacognitive knowledge followed by the addition of regulation of cognition (Brown, 1978(Brown, , 1987)), monitoring and control (Nelson & Narens, 1990) and more recently, motivational, and affective processes (Efklides, 2011). In practice, these conceptualizations translated to a 3-part skill set (plan, monitor, evaluate) (Fogarty, 1994). The culmination is a broad conceptual agreement of metacognition as the knowledge, regulation, and monitoring of cognitive processes.In terms of measuring metacognition, an apt analogy can also be found in black holes within the domain of the physical sciences. The history of the study of black holes moved from mathematics to physics and from theory (general relativity) to simulations and experimentation to telescopic evidence (Oldham & Auger, 2016). Similarly, the study of metacognition has evolved from an abstract conceptualization of the existence of "something" which was hard to nail down but had clear effects to the emergence of (sometimes contradictory) theories and models to the use of more precise and comprehensive measurement tools such as systematic observational coding protocols, computer hardware and software, eye-tracking, and electroencephalogram (EEG). Through these advances, like black holes which have powerful interactions with things around them but can only be seen with special equipment, we have not only been able to fine tune and calibrate the conceptualization and measurement of metacognitive processes but also have gained a far deeper understanding of their importance to successful learning and other life outcomes. In both cases, as measurement tools and methods have advanced, so have our understanding and applications. Specific analogical comparisons between metacognition and black holes or the folklore of the Loch Ness monster might be a bridge too far; nonetheless, these converging ideas across disparate spheres underlie the concept of the existence of an important and impactful "something" (e.g., quality of art; obscenity; Nessie; black holes; metacognition). The important takeaway point here is the abstraction of an increasingly measurable "something" core to its domain. As important as art or black holes are to segments of society, so are metacognitive processes. The core aim of this Advances in Metacognition and Reflection topic of Frontiers in Developmental Psychology was to build on this foundation and endeavor to fill existing gaps of the past four decades of research on metacognitive processes with a chief focus on reflective processes. As is representative of the literature on metacognition and reflection, the papers in this special issue employ diverse theoretical frameworks, methods, and developmental periods yet converge in one critical way: positive and moderate to strong associations and predictions of metacognition and reflection across developmental outcomes, contexts, and perspectives (Table 1). The key contributions thus lie in the elucidation and parsing of specific metacognitive components; the what, why, how, when, and for whom of detecting effects. In this way, we take a metacognitive approach to studying metacognition. As we clarify and precisely investigate the conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement of metacognition and its subcomponents, its shape and form become less amorphous, and we will not only vaguely "know it when we see it" but also will be able to precisely identify and explicate its elements, associations, and impacts (see Terneusen et al., 2023). Achieving such a conditional, calibrated, unified metacognition has important implications at both basic (creating new knowledge) and applied (teaching, interventions, policy) levels across development, contexts, and individuals, resulting in more efficient and adaptive learning and successful development and life outcomes.