1- Metacognition as defined in our book is “knowing about knowing”.

Metacognition is

at work when a student becomes aware of what he/she knows and how they know it.

Let’s take for example, Cassandra a student who’s taking a statistics course.

Cassandra decided to memorize all the formulas required for the test, she had some

problems at first but after some time she got a hold of it and memorized them all.

During the test, Cassandra got confused and didn’t know how and when to use each

formula therefore she failed the test regardless of the hard work she felt that she put

into this test. After getting the results, Cassandra decided to re-evaluate her studying

strategies and discover where she went wrong and how she could improve her

performance for the upcoming test. Cassandra realized that she spent a lot of time

trying to memorize the formulas instead of actually practicing how to solve problems

and use the formulas required. This new self-awareness allowed Cassandra to change

her learning strategy and plan her learning tasks accordingly. In addition, she

evaluated her performance by solving a practice test and found that she performed

better than the first test. Using this method, she was able to measure her current

knowledge and implement this new "meta-cognition" that she hadn't tried before. This

student performed considerably better on the second exam due to metacognition as by

self-awareness of her cognitive processes, she was able to control them.

Consequently, she was able to develop her cognitive processes. This example shows

us how meta-cognition allows for cognitive development.

2- Temperament is a person’s behavioral style and characteristic ways of responding it

can be described in terms of predispositions toward emotional reactivity and self-

regulation. We have 3 basic styles of temperament: the easy child, the difficult child

and the slow to warm up child. In our case, the difficult child tends to react
negatively and cries frequently, engages in irregular daily routines, and is slow to

accept a change. Difficult temperament is related to behavioral problems as it

foreshadows and gives insight on the person’s thoughts, emotions and character, in

other words, his personality. Take for example, a student who’s very fearful, his

behavior can predict internalizing problems such as having anxiety when he becomes

older. It is very hard for kids who have a difficult temperament to build friendships

due to their inability to be flexible and adapt with different atmospheres and different

mindsets. Therefore, kids won’t interact with them a lot as kids look for an easy-going

friendship. This reflects on his self-schema and self-perception, and that can affect

his self-esteem and his relationships with his peers. He will feel as though no one

understands him and can feel left out and he might not be able to cope with the

environment and have negative affectivity. Furthermore, the difficult temperament

that kids have doesn’t only affect their peer relationships but affects their relationship

with their families. Parenting can be negative due to the parent’s temperament or

because they get triggered and respond negatively because they get evoked by the

child’s temperament. Children who are easily soothed experience increased positive

emotionality and warmth from the parents, whereas a child that excessively cries and

is hard to control can be harder to handle and therefore can cause a triggered response

from the parents. Both the parents and the child will be stimulating and augmenting

one another’s behavior and that is unhealthy to their relationship. In my opinion, it

starts to become more of a cycle where the parents get angry because of the child’s

behavior and the child will increase his negative behavior due to the parent’s negative

response. This explains why children who are considered difficult tend to be punished

more often that those who are considered as easy. Since most parents will mistakenly
think that by punishing their child more they would be helping him and changing his

behavior to become more favorable with what they desire.