Meta-Reasoning: Monitoring and Control of Thinking and Reasoning

Failure to avoid a self-flagged fault indicates that the nested concepts implicated by the task are not being activated relative to the stated goal-a shortfall in functional meta-reasoning.

“Failure to do so indicates that the nested concepts implicated by the task (e.g., what qualifies an 'original questionnaire item') are not being activated relative to the stated goal-a shortfall in functional meta-reasoning[10].”

Metacognition is conceptually and empirically distinct from fluid intelligence.

“Metacognition is a part of the wider set of human executive functions, although it is conceptually and empirically distinct from fluid intelligence: It is possible (and indeed common) to evaluate the operation of classical executive functions, for instance, reflecting on whether a solution to a logical puzzle was in fact appropriate (Ackerman & Thompson 2017).”

Confidence and its adjustment are central to decision-making and reasoning, especially in many aspects of human-AI interaction.

“Confidence and its adjustment are central to decision-making and reasoning, especially in many aspects of human-AI interaction [4, 171] ( §3.1, §3.2, and §3.3).”

The relative ease with which GenAI can produce extensive output may affect output evaluation and reliance via potentially misleading cues that people implicitly rely on to update their confidence and guide their subsequent metacognitive control.

“The relative ease with which GenAI can produce extensive output may also affect output evaluation and reliance via potentially misleading cues that people implicitly rely on to update their confidence and guide their subsequent metacognitive control [4].”

Metacognition research suggests that increased effort requirements may discourage users from appropriate evaluation.

“How this will affect users' selfconfidence and AI reliance remains unclear, but metacognition research suggests that increased effort requirements may discourage users from appropriate evaluation [4].”

Self-evaluation is particularly promising for augmenting GenAI explainability, where it can help increase users' receptiveness to explanations that seek to update their mental models of GenAI systems.

“Self-evaluation is particularly promising for augmenting GenAI explainability, where it can help increase users' receptiveness to explanations that seek to update their mental models of GenAI systems [4,171] (see §4.2.1 for more on explainability).”

By increasing people's confidence, such cues can affect their metacognitive control, leading people to decrease the effort they invest into further deliberate processing, as measured by thinking time and changes-of-mind.

“By increasing people's confidence, such cues can affect their metacognitive control, leading people to decrease the effort they invest into further deliberate processing, as measured by thinking time and changes-of-mind [4,183,184].”