Definition
Plain language
The cognitive psychologist who coined 'metacognition' in 1979.
As stated in the literature
John Flavell, whose 1979 framework distinguishes metacognitive knowledge from metacognitive regulation; the conceptual basis for the MaR reward design.
Why it matters: His framework underpins how researchers think about AI metacognition, including reward designs that target self-monitoring rather than just task accuracy.
For example, Flavell distinguished knowing that you're bad at memorizing phone numbers from actually deciding to write one down — knowledge versus regulation.
Heard on the show
“And their answer comes from a cognitive psychologist named John Flavell, writing in nineteen seventy-nine.”Episode 079 — An Old Idea From Cognitive Psychology Reshapes How We Reward Reasoning Models