The "Come Together" project brings educational research and cognitive neuroscience together. By combining the approaches and methods of both disciplines, it aims to answer unresolved questions and establish an interdisciplinary foundation for understanding metacognition. The starting point is the investigation of motor metacognition in music learning.

Background

We can often observe our own mental state: we can report what we are thinking, predict whether we will remember a number, or recognize whether we have understood a concept. This ability to monitor various cognitive functions is known as metacognition. Different research fields have examined various aspects of metacognition. Educational researchers have focused on the effects of using metacognitive tools to monitor and improve learning processes, investigating, among other things, whether children with strong metacognitive skills learn better. Cognitive neuroscientists, on the other hand, have sought to identify the neural and computational mechanisms underlying metacognition.

Although these research fields have studied the same processes, they have largely remained separate and have often produced conflicting results. In this project, we will attempt to answer a number of key questions relevant to both disciplines by combining the strengths and methods of each field. This will lay the foundation for a truly interdisciplinary approach to understanding metacognition, the brain’s fascinating ability to know itself. Understanding, measuring, and improving this ability could have a profound impact on educational outcomes.