Roles of the metacognition and emotional systems in a categorization task for adults with moderate and severe learning disabilities

Abstract

This research aimed to evaluate the links between metacognitive experiences, emotional coping strategies and categorization in adults with severe and moderate intellectual disabilities. The participants consisted of 32 people between 23 and 70 years old and having severe and moderate intellectual disabilities were recruited in several institutions. Their metacognition and their coping strategies were assessed using questionnaires before and after a complex categorization task. Metacognitive experiences refer to awareness and feelings about a task. The results highlighted a link between the Feeling Of Familiarity (FOF), one of concept of metacognitive experience and categorization performances and between coping strategies and metacognitive experience. There was also a link between coping strategies and metacognitive experiences, more specifically emotional outbursts. Finally, self-criticism appeared to be a good predictor of part of the FOF prior to the task. Self criticism is the ability to people to consider he is partly responsible of a situation.

In conclusion, the participants’ poor performances could be explained by their inefficient coping strategies and metacognitive experiences. Our results highlight the necessity to coach adults with severe and moderate intellectual disabilities in metacognitive experiences and emotional coping strategies before, and after a cognitive task.

Keywords:

• severe learning disability
• metacognition
• coping strategy

Acknowledgements

We would like to show our gratitude to the ADAPEI 41 (institutions supports to people with intellectual disabilities) and more specifically Mr Barragan for his permission to propose our experimentation in this association. We are also immensely grateful to all the participants

Research funding is academic, with no restrictions on access or publication of data. No financial conflicts of interest have been declared. All authors have contributed to, seen, and approved of the manuscript and agree to the order of authors as listed on the title page.

Disclosure statement

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

Table 1. Means, standard deviations and correlation between prospective and retrospective items of the Metacognitive Experience Questionnaire.