Metacognition: An Important Skill for Modern Times | Brendan Conway-Smith | TEDxCarletonUniversity

0:05 I want to begin by asking have you ever been trapped in a dark room this isn't my attempt to start with a joke and I'm also not going to begin with some captivating anecdote you might be one of the many people in the world myself included who feel you've lived your life in a dark room my research tries to bring a little light into our homes and we're going to do this by telling you about the science of metacognition for my PhD I research metacognition which is a fancy word for how we can understand and control our own minds and the enormous benefits that can come from it first I'm going to tell you why this is important and especially why this is important right now the thing is we humans have never fully

0:52 understood our own minds just as until recently we've never understood our own bodies humans have been around for millions of years before we had the slightest idea of what any of our organs did we had no clue that we even had an immune system so it's as if we've spent our entire lifetime on this planet as strangers to ourselves just think of the harm caused by this it's gruesome to picture what medicine was like in the past really it's a very good thing doctors no longer prescribe drinking Mercury to pregnant women and as absurd as this is it's likely that people in the future will look back at our understanding of the Mind as if we're in the Dark Ages we now mostly understand how our bodies

1:38 function and because of this we can interact with them better we know how to keep out harmful things and take in the right nutrients we can even remove parts of the body that don't work and replace them with parts that work better so here's my point just like our bodies we've also never understood our own minds we haven't had an inkling into any of its inner mechanisms and because of this we haven't interacted well with them at all but now finally we're beginning to just as when we learned about our physical makeup we're now glimpsing our own mental processes and so we're learning to interact with them better

2:23 if it this way it's as if we've been living inside a dark house now picture what someone looks like as they walk through a dark home with no idea what's inside the rooms can you picture them stumbling grasping in the dark can you imagine they don't feel particularly happy about their situation and after years of living in a dark house it's understandable that they'd become anxious or depressed or drawn to whatever easy pleasure they can find living in a dark house is how people the world over feel inside their own minds trying to move through spaces they've never seen not living as well as they could in a

3:09 room that is lit so here's my point just as science has illuminated the human body we are now brightening the rooms of the Mind so this is an exciting time in human history when we are finally coming to understand our own mental home we're learning how the mind can understand itself and how it can interact with itself better okay I have a quick confession to make there's a good reason why I chose this research it's because I was born with ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and as you may have heard this condition makes it pretty difficult to regulate attention in fact only five percent of students with ADHD Graduate University

3:56 how I got by was by practicing metacognitive techniques and that's why I studied metacognition for my PhD with the goal of giving the same tools that helped me to other people metacognition is when the Mind controls itself that's just a word for something we all do naturally it's like using a sciency word for something as simple as studying how your body moves for example do you routinely Focus your attention I bet you're focusing right now how about this have you ever been working on something while trying to control an emotion have you ever resisted urges like I really don't feel like doing this I'd rather be scrolling through my phone but no I have to focus on this one important

4:43 thing sound familiar that's because controlling your mind is as normal as controlling your body unfortunately it's not always that easy but it is how we get the most important things done in life and the better you are at it the better you can achieve your goals and greater fulfillment the neuroscientist Stephen Fleming showed that insight into your own mind metacognition can generate Higher Achievement in every domain growing evidence shows that this skill can improve human performance in sports education therapy and even business you name the field and there are metacognitive techniques that can help you improve how

5:28 because of this General principle understanding your mind helps you direct it better I'll repeat that understanding your mind helps you direct it better and there's never been a more important time to learn metacognitive techniques as you probably know from your personal experience surviving and thriving in the modern world requires that you in some way control your own mind have you ever gone on an information diet right there you're controlling your own mental input have you ever turned off your internet or resisted a distraction so you can focus there again you're controlling your emotions and your attention naturally

6:13 these days people are finding it increasingly important to be deliberate about their own minds and this is becoming more and more important because our brains were not built for modern times our primate brains evolved for very different environment and this has been called the problem of ancient brains in a high-tech world one side effect of modern technology is that apps games social media and online content can hijack the learning Pathways of the human brain and when this happens people become captive to Compulsive behaviors attention and emotional problems the pandemic has been pouring gasoline on this Mental Health crisis

7:00 it has forced many people into social isolation and an even greater Reliance on devices for socializing and entertainment and this is added to a tsunami of debilitating mental health issues that affect over half a billion people worldwide with a financial toll in the trillions but there's good news Decades of Empirical research have shown that metacognition is effective at decreasing addictive behaviors and improving attention and emotional well-being because again understanding your mind helps you direct it better understanding your mind helps you direct it better for example we can use metacognitive training to boost our mental performance

7:46 metacognition is a skill we can all improve and even become an expert at first the science shows that you can train your attention daily Focus exercises and meditation actually do allow you to be more focused in general second we can learn to better control our emotions if you find yourself giving in to impulses whether it's binging a whole box of cookies or checking that same web page repeatedly there are practices that can increase your control over them third you can train your memory and expand your ability to remember complex things more easily mental training is a lot like physical

8:33 training anyone who spends a few minutes at the gym and then tries to flex in the mirror will be disappointed you don't see results in a few days but over weeks you find the growth of new muscles you didn't have before like this regular mental training helps you develop new and improved capabilities that allow you to think and act with greater control and clarity we can all learn to be more deliberate with our thoughts attention and emotions it's possible to have a toolkit and mental strategies that can help us flourish and has there been a more important time to understand your mind and learn to direct it better just as our physical health relies on

9:19 being intelligent about our bodies the future of our mental well-being depends on us getting smart about our own minds