Cognition vs. Metacognition — What's the Difference?

Cognition ( (listen)) refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses many aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language.

Metacognition is an awareness of one's own thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word meta, meaning "beyond", or "on top of".

The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

(philosophy) the act of thinking about thinking; sentience

The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or intuition; knowledge.

The process of knowing, of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought and through the senses.

(countable) A result of a cognitive process.

The act of knowing; knowledge; perception.

That which is known.

The psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning