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The Reder and Ritter article brought out many interesting points. First off, they defined

metaknowledge as how people determine what they know about a question before they

actually answer it. They mention that feeling of knowing is a general process that operates

whenever memory is queried. It is also an automatic process that goes unnoticedunless there

is a retrieval failure after an assessment that the fact should be in memory. This made me

question whether metaknowledge (or metacognition processes) can indeed be an unconscious

process. So far in this course, I have been unconvinced that metacognition can actually occur

unconsciously. But it seems that when we are asked a question, we unconsciously have a feeling

of knowing that either allows us to answer the question or not. Although we do not actually

search for the answer, we may have a feeling of not knowing based on the question cue.

I interpreted their statement In problem solving, there is a decoupling between feeling of

knowing and knowing when surface structure does not predict the deep structure of the problem

to mean that a novice student may have a feeling of knowing for all spring problems if they

have learned the equation F=-kx. But they will not understand that some spring problems may

require the use of conservation of energy. Im not sure that is how they meant the statement to

be interpreted, but that is how I understood it.

The Reder and Ritter study showed that participants had feeling of knowing judgments

based on how familiar they were with the problem parts and the co-occurrence of two operands.

Reder and Ritter feel that co-occurrence information are important for giving a feeling of

knowing. However, I tried to think of situations where co-occurrence of information could lead

to an incorrect feeling of knowing. Perhaps a student might see the words velocity and

acceleration and assume that they know they can solve the problem using kinematics.

However, the problem might be solved using conservation of momentum. Since the student has

an immediate feeling of knowing, they dont take the time to search forthe answer because they

think they know it. I do not know if this is the way to apply this concept to an educational

setting, but I am trying to make a connection to my own research.

The Metacognitive Judgments chapter also helped me see that the preliminary feeling of

knowing that drives strategy choice is based on cue familiarity. I feel this is so important in the

field of physics because certain terms such as velocity, acceleration, energy, and force are used

so frequently throughout two semesters of an introductory physics course, but in different

contexts. Thus, students may feel that they have mastered a topic such as acceleration but are

unable to apply this topic in a different context. They often over-generalize ideas or misapply

concepts because they struggle to see the deeper features of the problem solution. Students see

certain terms and physical situations so often that they may feel they have solved this problem

before. Thus, they solve the problem based upon their incorrect assumptions rather than the

deeper conceptual features of the problem. As an instructor, we should actually help students to

get a feeling of not knowing so that they choose the strategy of calculate rather than

retrieve. I think this can be done by asking questions along the way throughout the problem

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solving process, such as, Why are you using equation X? or When can concept Y be applied

and when can it not?