Group navigation and procedural metacognition

ABSTRACT

There is a remarkable gap in the academic literature when it comes to group navigation, and procedural metacognition in group navigation is an important but virtually unexplored topic. The present paper aims to fill this gap by providing an account of how metacognitive feelings evaluate and regulate group navigational processes. The paper reviews animal studies and ethnographic work to elucidate three exiting processes in human group navigation: many-wrongs, leadership and emergent sensing. This is followed by an analysis of the role of procedural metacognition in the navigational processes involved in each of these three processes. This analysis shows that procedural metacognition serves to regulate and evaluate group navigation in a flexible, process-specific way. When performance issues arise during group navigation, the emergence of negative affective states makes the navigational process conspicuous, prompting a modulation of said process.

KEYWORDS:

• Group navigation
• procedural metacognition
• metacognitive feelings
• disorientation

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Marco Ichingolo for his feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback and their encouraging comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Irish Research Council OIPD/2021/570 Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship

Notes on contributors

Pablo Fernández Velasco

Pablo Fernández Velasco is pursuing his research on the philosophy of place in the philosophy department of Trinity College Dublin. He is also affiliated to the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience of University College London, and he supervises graduate work at the Bartlett School of Architecture. The focus of his work is on how space and place structure human experience. He specialises in spatial cognition and in phenomenology. He follows an interdisciplinary approach, actively collaborating with neuroscientists, architects, geographers and anthropologists.