Awareness, Agency, and Metacognition

Scope: Conscious experience of perception (perceptual awareness, masking); metacognitive monitoring and control; sense of agency; body ownership; interoceptive awareness; self-referential processing; feeling of knowing; judgment of learning; mind wandering; self-monitoring; attentional awareness.

Out of scope: “Consciousness” as a trait or umbrella construct.

This category absorbed the dissolved “Memory Control and Metamemory” entries (feeling of knowing, judgment of learning) and the Self-monitoring row from Inhibitory Control; perceptual-awareness rows from the pre-reframe “Perceptual Awareness and Consciousness” category; and six 2026-04-15 additions (metacognitive monitoring, metacognitive control, sense of agency, body ownership, interoceptive awareness, self-referential processing). :::

This category contains 13 processes.

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Attentional awareness

Process ID: hed_attentional_awareness

Awareness of the current focus and content of attention.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Task

• Visual Masking Task

Fundamental references

• Koch & Tsuchiya (2007) Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11:16–22

Recent references

• Lamme (2018) Current Opinion in Psychology 29:28–32

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Body ownership

Process ID: hed_body_ownership

The experience that a body or body-part belongs to the self, revealed by multisensory illusions in which synchronous visuo-tactile or visuo-proprioceptive input shifts the perceived location of the body.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Body Ownership Illusion Task

Fundamental references

• Botvinick M & Cohen J (1998) Nature 391:756

• Ehrsson HH, Spence C & Passingham RE (2004) Science 305:875-877

Recent references

• Tsakiris M (2017) Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 70:597-609

• Blanke O, Slater M & Serino A (2015) Neuron 88:145-166

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Feeling of knowing

Process ID: hed_feeling_of_knowing

Judgment that information currently not retrievable would be recognized if presented.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Feeling-of-Knowing Task

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Interoceptive awareness

Process ID: hed_interoceptive_awareness

Conscious perception of internal bodily signals such as heartbeat, respiration, and visceral state; indexed by heartbeat-detection accuracy, heartbeat-evoked potentials, and interoceptive sensibility measures.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Body Ownership Illusion Task

• Heartbeat Detection Task

Fundamental references

• Schandry R (1981) Psychophysiology 18:483-488

• Craig AD (2002) Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3:655-666

Recent references

• Khalsa SS et al. (2018) Biological Psychiatry: CNNI 3:501-513

• Critchley HD & Garfinkel SN (2017) Current Opinion in Psychology 17:7-14

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Judgment of learning

Process ID: hed_judgment_of_learning

Prediction of future memory performance made during or after encoding.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Judgment-of-Learning Task

Fundamental references

• Arbuckle & Cuddy (1969) Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 8:126–131

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Masking

Process ID: hed_masking

Reduction in visibility or detectability of a target stimulus by a temporally or spatially adjacent masker.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Auditory Masking Task

• Visual Masking Task

Fundamental references

• Breitmeyer (1984) Visual Masking

Recent references

• Enns & Di Lollo (2000) Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4:345–352

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Metacognitive control

Process ID: hed_metacognitive_control

Regulation of cognition based on metacognitive monitoring - study-time allocation, strategy selection, answer withholding, and restart decisions - linking second-order evaluation to first-order behavior.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Directed Forgetting Task

• Judgment-of-Learning Task

• Think/No-Think Task

Fundamental references

• Nelson TO & Narens L (1990) The Psychology of Learning and Motivation 26:125-173

• Son LK & Metcalfe J (2000) Journal of Experimental Psychology: LMC 26:204-221

Recent references

• Ackerman R & Thompson VA (2017) Trends in Cognitive Sciences 21:607-617

• Desender K, Boldt A & Yeung N (2018) Psychological Science 29:761-778

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Metacognitive monitoring

Process ID: hed_metacognitive_monitoring

Second-order evaluation of ongoing first-order cognition - how confident one is in a perception, memory, or judgment - yielding reportable assessments that dissociate from first-order accuracy.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Feeling-of-Knowing Task

• Heartbeat Detection Task

• Intentional Binding Task

• Judgment-of-Learning Task

• Remember/Know Task

• Sustained Attention to Response Task

Fundamental references

• Nelson TO & Narens L (1990) The Psychology of Learning and Motivation 26:125-173

• Koriat A (1997) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 126:349-370

Recent references

• Fleming SM & Lau HC (2014) Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8:443

• Maniscalco B & Lau H (2012) Consciousness and Cognition 21:422-430

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Mind wandering

Process ID: hed_mind_wandering

Task-unrelated thought that arises during an ongoing task.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Continuous Performance Task

• Psychomotor Vigilance Task

• Sustained Attention to Response Task

Fundamental references

• Smallwood & Schooler (2006) Psychological Bulletin 132:946–958

Recent references

• Christoff, Irving, Fox, Spreng & Andrews-Hanna (2016) Nature Reviews Neuroscience 17:718–731

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Perceptual awareness

Process ID: hed_perceptual_awareness

Conscious access to perceptual content.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Task

• Visual Masking Task

Fundamental references

• Baars (1988) A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness

• Dehaene, Changeux, Naccache, Sackur & Sergent (2006) Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10:204–211

Recent references

• Dehaene (2014) Consciousness and the Brain

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Self-monitoring

Process ID: hed_self_monitoring

Ongoing evaluation of one’s own performance against task goals and expected outcomes.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Heartbeat Detection Task

• Imitation-Inhibition Task

• Prospective Memory Task

• Source Memory Task

• Sustained Attention to Response Task

• Verbal Fluency Task

Fundamental references

• Nelson & Narens (1990) in The Psychology of Learning and Motivation

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Self-referential processing

Process ID: hed_self_referential_processing

Processing of information in relation to the self, yielding enhanced encoding for self-relevant material and characteristic engagement of cortical midline structures (mPFC, PCC).

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Autobiographical Memory Task

• Body Ownership Illusion Task

• Self-Referential Encoding Task

Fundamental references

• Rogers TB, Kuiper NA & Kirker WS (1977) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35:677-688

• Kelley WM et al. (2002) Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14:785-794

Recent references

• Northoff G et al. (2006) NeuroImage 31:440-457

• Murray RJ, Schaer M & Debbané M (2012) Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 36:1043-1059

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Sense of agency

Process ID: hed_sense_of_agency

The experience of being the cause of one’s own actions and their sensory consequences, dissociable into implicit (intentional binding) and explicit (authorship judgment) components.

Tasks

The following tasks engage this process:

• Intentional Binding Task

Fundamental references

• Libet B et al. (1983) Brain 106:623-642

• Haggard P, Clark S & Kalogeras J (2002) Nature Neuroscience 5:382-385

Recent references

• Haggard P (2017) Nature Reviews Neuroscience 18:196-207

• Moore JW & Obhi SS (2012) Consciousness and Cognition 21:546-561