Explanatory Depth
CPD: Cognitive Sciences Level 3 (by Dr Robert Hausmann), topic 1.2.1
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?
1. Declarative questions
- 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.
2. Procedural questions
- 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.
3. Mental-model questions
- 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.
Test yourself on Explanatory Depth
Which of these types of questions don't usually get a typical YES/NO answer?