Sense and nonsense of metacognition as ‘second order skills’ in relation to specific learning disorders

Year 2015, Volume: 32 Issue: 1, 16 - 33, 01.01.2015

Annemie Desoete

Abstract

After an introduction on ‘second order skills ‘(metacognition, Executive Functions or EF, self-regulation and

Effortfull Control or EC) and on specific learning disorders (dyslexia/dyscalculia), we focus on the ‘nexus’

between both constructs in five studies. In study 1 we compared prediction and evaluation skills in children

with and without learning disabilities. In addition we revealed that children with procedural dyscalculia had

poor prediction and evaluation skills (study 2) and that persons with dyslexia and dyscalculia had below

average working memory and planning skills (cold EF – study 3) with children with dyslexia also having

problems with inhibition (hot EF – study 4). When analyzing metacognition in adolescents study 5

demonstrated that poor spellers are also were poor in detecting spelling mistakes. Moreover study 6

demonstrated that high functioning adolescents with dyslexia show a lot of similarities on hot and cold EF

with peers without dyslexia. Finally study 7 demonstrated that metacognition can be trained in the case of a

‘production deficiency’ with an informed, prolonged and embedded training and that metacognition can be

considered from a Universal Design for Leaning (UDL) perspective as ‘tool’ taking into account the different

Process Communication Model (PCM) personality types (Kahler, 2008; Pauley & Pauley, 2012).

Keywords

Metacognition, Executive functions, Efforfull control, Learning Disabilities

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