Metacognitive Agency and Multi-Perspectival Representations

Abstract

Abstract The working hypothesis of this chapter is that what accounts for these new cognitive capacities, and others, is that children from three to six years of age are in the process of becoming metacognitive agents who reflectively regulate their executive-tier conceptualizing, thinking, and decision-making. What makes this rational/reflective mode of operation possible is a new organizational architecture that builds on top of toddlers’ executive tier of regulation a second-order executive tier, a metacognitive tier, of regulation. This chapter provides a review and novel analysis of the literature in preschoolers’ cognition based on the principles of metacognitive agency and multi-perspectival representations.