At the University of Sydney Meta Lab, we explore how people monitor and manage their thoughts and emotions. Our work bridges cognitive science and real-world decision-making, with applications in education, mental health, and high-stakes environments.
Our research investigates how individuals monitor and regulate their thoughts and emotions. By employing a blend of experimental methods and individual differences approaches, we explore the mechanisms by which people understand, evaluate, and adaptively modify their internal cognitive and emotional experiences.
At the core of our work is an examination of the fundamental processes underlying metacognition, with a particular emphasis on translating these insights into practical applications within educational and learning contexts. Our interdisciplinary approach bridges cognitive, educational, and affective psychology, drawing from these diverse domains to develop innovative theoretical frameworks of metacognition as well as novel interventions to improve educational outcomes.
By integrating perspectives across psychological disciplines, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of how individuals can more effectively monitor their mental processes, ultimately enhancing learning, emotional outcomes, and thinking.
This research stream investigates the relationship between confidence and decision-making, with a primary focus on improving calibration. Miscalibration can have important implications: overconfidence might lead to inadequate risk preparation, while underconfidence could result in missed opportunities, such as avoiding a potentially profitable investment. Our research explores how confidence impacts decision quality, develops interventions to enhance decision-making calibration, and examines the consequences of miscalibration.
Self-report measures, such as confidence ratings, are the primary method for measuring metacognition in research settings. Contrary to previous assumptions, our research suggests that providing these ratings can itself influence cognitive performance. This area of study explores the reasons why people react to providing metacognitive ratings, how individual differences impact this reactivity, and the implications for understanding self-assessment's role in learning and education.
This research focuses on emotional self-awareness and regulation. We investigate how individuals monitor and become aware of their emotions, examining the reciprocal relationship between emotion and metacognition. A key area of interest is how people develop metacognitive beliefs about their feelings, such as feeling certain about a specific emotional state or believing that a particular action will definitely generate a desired emotional response.
Efficacy beliefs are judgments about the perceived effectiveness of one's actions. These beliefs significantly influence behaviour by shaping expectations and decision-making. For example, an individual who believes themselves to be an excellent driver might engage in riskier driving behaviours, while someone who perceives themselves as poor at mathematics could be discouraged from pursuing an engineering degree. Our research in this area explores the complex processes of how efficacy beliefs are formed, the mechanisms behind their changes, and why these beliefs often diverge from objective reality.
For any enquiries, please contact kit.double@sydney.edu.au or visit our website.
