Metarecognition in Time-Stressed Decision Making: Recognizing, Critiquing, and Correcting

Abstract

We describe a framework for decision making, called the recognition/metacognition (R/M) model, that explains how decision makers handle uncertainty and novelty while exploiting their experience in real-world domains. The model describes a set of critical-thinking strategies that supplement recognitional processes by verifying the results of recognition and correcting problems. Structured situation models causally organize information about a situation and provide a basis for metarecognitional processes. Metarecognitional processes determine when it is worthwhile to think more about a problem; identify evidence-conclusion relationships within a situation model; critique situation models for incompleteness, conflict, and unreliability; and prompt collection or retrieval of new information and revision of assumptions. We illustrate the R/M framework in the context of naval tactical decision making.