Explanatory Depth

Types of Metacognitive Questions

On average, how many pounds of coffee does Colombia export to the United States in a year?
What is the formal procedure for filing a patent with the U.S. Patent Office?
How does a sewing machine work?

A simple, declarative fact that can be answered by going to a search engine and entering a query that will return a sensible answer.
For these questions, figuring out if you know the answer or not is a relatively straightforward process.
- You look into long-term memory and search for an answer. If you don’t get any hits, then you know you don’t know the answer.

You must know the steps of the process necessary to achieve an end goal.
To learn how to file a patent, you could run a search on the internet or ask an expert.
Knowing if you know how to do this might be as simple as asking yourself, “Have I ever fled a patent?” If the answer is “No,” then you know you don’t know how to do it.

The third class of question has a declarative component, but the facts are not stated in isolation.
When asked if you know how a sewing machine works, what probably happens is that you think about a sewing machine and what it does.
- Then you think about the various components that are in a sewing machine and how they interconnect.
- Finally, you run a mental simulation and see how those components interact.

1Cognitive Science for Educators

1.1Mental Models

1.1.1Mental Models

1.2Explanatory Depth

1.2.1Explanatory Depth

1.3The Generation Effect

1.3.1The Generation Effect

1.4Self-Explaining

1.4.1Self-Explaining 1

1.4.2Self-Explaining 2

1.5Expertise

1.5.1Expertise 1

1.5.2Expertise 2

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