The editors of this special section commissioned this commentary to bring together some of the conceptual, empirical and measurement issues arising from this series of articles. This commentary explores metacognition in relation to its neurobiology, and diverse syndromes and clinical phenotypes, including schizophrenia, alexithymia, and personality disorders, as well as its relation to assessment and prospects for the further delineation of mechanisms of change in psychological therapy.
It seems reasonable to assert that a fundamental aspect of our humanity is our capacity to attune to our own minds, the minds of others and make use of our mind-mindedness to accommodate our own and others' needs, plans and intentions. Following from this, these capacities enable us to negotiate and resolve intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts in desires and goals in sophisticated ways that seem so typical for our species. Through understanding our own and others' minds, we are able to enter into pretend modes of functioning that enable us to take the perspective of others, share their joy and happiness as well as their pain and distress. Thus, we can be moved to help and support those around us, to express care, love, respect, sympathy and compassion. Indeed our utilisation of these capacities to alleviate distress in others moves beyond simple bonds of family and community, towards helping other human beings and other species. Basic information, such a gaze, posture, facial expression, voice tone and volume, provide us with subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) signals of the well-being, intentions, needs, emotions and states of mind of individuals around us. As we respond to and interpret these signals, we adjust our own behaviour and response, often accommodating those around us. This constant daily interplay between multiple states of mind is remarkable in light of the day to day pressures we face getting onto crowded buses, subways, and trains, requiring the inhibition our own irritability and frustration. We might stop to help a mother lift her child's pram onto the bus; after a long day and despite our tired legs, we might give up our comfortable seat on a subway to an elderly man we've never seen before and may never see again. All these things happen on a daily basis without ever a word passing between us. Each day we co-operate with a community of others with whom we share scarce resources ( Hrdy, 2009). At the same time we can also deploy our capacities for mental state understanding in the services of other interpersonal and evolutionary priorities ( Liotti and Gilbert, 2011). Understanding the mental states of others enables us to anticipate the actions of others including their errors. In this way we can compete, exploit weaknesses, outwit and defeat our opponents. Alternatively, we can anticipate and attend to threats from others and defend ourselves against attacks to our psychological and physical integrity. It is also in our capacities to appreciate and understand the cognitive and emotional states of others where the darkest aspects of our humanity reside, that is, in our utilisation of mental state information to exploit, manipulate and hurt others for our own selfish goals.
Therefore, we understand three key aspects of this analysis. First it acknowledges our capacities for metacognition and mentalization. Second, it acknowledges our utilisation (how and when we use and apply these competences) of these capacities. Finally, these capacities can be utilised in the service of separate and distinctive evolutionary priorities including affiliation, competition and threat. Based on this understanding, we can conceptualise symptoms as an expression of processes of adaptation within which metacognition is at the heart of where psychopathology might be best understood in terms of the interplay between metacognitive capacities and competences, the utilisation of these competences, and the overarching social mentalities governing their deployment.
These articles point towards a rich and varied research agenda that will require increasing collaboration and cross-cutting multidisciplinary perspectives on metacognition. We remain at the early stages of this research endeavour and there are remarkable opportunities to develop the field further. For example, there is a need for transdiagnostic research comparing metacognitive functioning amongst different diagnostic groups, or research exploring how coping styles or attachment states of mind might be associated with the materialization of metacognition and the expression of symptoms both cross-sectionally and over time. Clinically, we begin to see the emergence of a series of closely related transdiagnostic constructs including metacognition, alexithymia, coping and affect regulation that will provide an insight into the development and expression of psychopathology. We also can identify a key psychological mechanism of change that can provide insights into processes of recovery and relationships with outcomes.
