Approaches to Metacognition

By: Jerry Rhodes (Founder)
Category: Thinking
On: 9 September, 2025

In the Beginning: The DEVA project

The research and early development that laid the foundations for Effective Intelligence was funded by Philips Eindhoven, the international electronics organisation headquartered in The Netherlands. The project was known as the DEVA project*. A small team of cognitive scientists were asked to find out how people, with different thinking skills and habits, worked solo and together effectively.

Due to my own early pioneering work in creativity and innovation, I was asked to join the team as an independent consultant. We aimed to create practical learning tools which could be used for improving how scientists and managers collaborated throughout Philips world-wide. They saw the immediate threat of competition especially from Japan so one priority was to shorten the lead-time from product idea through to its innovation into the market.

Robert Bales

Unbeknown to our DEVA team, a part of our research approach - observation of live small-group interactions - had been pioneered by Robert Bales in the 1950s at the University of Harvard†. Bales, however, had a different purpose from ours. We wanted to build practical tools for managers and knowledge workers to raise the quality speed and depth of their thinking skills. Bales made an academic enquiry only. Practical applications came later in the 1970s, with the SYMLOG system (Systematic Multiple Level Observation Groups)

Robert Bales was focused on discovering, and to some extent measuring, the different approaches between people in groups: he noticed there were those who focused on achieving the ‘task’ in contrast to those who were more inclined towards nurturing the group dynamics between ‘people’.

Bales created an observation system to look at outer activities in small groups for the purpose of finding patterns of behaviours in them. Are there kinds of behaviours that are more productive than others? By contrast, the DEVA project in Philips penetrated the inner Thinking-Intentions of people working together so as to demonstrate how people can unite ‘how’ they think with ‘what’ they are thinking about: to match their thinking to the task and with each other.

SYMLOG 1970s

This is a summary of the SYMLOG analysis of behaviours of people in groups.

“Dominance/submission. Is this member active, outgoing, and talkative – or passive, quiet and introverted?
Friendliness/unfriendliness. Is this member warm, open and positive – or negative and irritable?
Acceptance of authority/non-acceptance of authority. Is this member analytical, and task-oriented – or emotional, untraditional and (possibly) resentful. (Forsyth 2006: 41)”

Bales the Academic

I never met Bales, but I gather from the literature that he was admired and greatly valued by his colleagues. It seems that he nurtured his students’ well-being and academic development. I have heard stories of the vitriolic in-fighting that sometimes occurred in university departments. Rather than punitive critique which perhaps was more the style in academic circles in those days, I assume Bales believed that positive encouragement would produce better outcomes. His own observation of group dynamics possibly also led him to set an example within his university, to demonstrate in real life that combining academic rigour (task orientation) with human empathy (people orientation) brings the best results.

Life in universities has moved on since the 1950s. Well, I hope it has, though it has been many years since I graduated from Oxford where I read History. I was lucky enough to have a remarkable personal tutor in the Greig Barr‡, but I confess I skipped some lectures from other Dons** and relied on the resources of the Bodleian Library to fill the gaps.

The DEVA Project results

What did we find in Philips that was different from Bales’ research? Our advantage was that we could test, almost immediately, every finding and tool we created as we went along. We had access to scientists and managers in Europe and the UK. We could quickly discover what worked and discard what didn’t. By 1979 we were distributing graphically designed materials across the world, supported with in-house training programmes. Along with other technical and structural changes in Philips our efforts contributed to the success of reducing the innovation cycle.

Discovering the word Metacognition

John H Flavell, a psychologist who specialised in cognitive development in children, first coined the word ‘Metacognition’ in 1979***. The term was not known outside a limited circle. It spread only gradually beyond academia. Certainly the DEVA team, although contemporary, didn’t know of it. Back then, without the internet of today where it is now so easy to discover academic references, gathering together existing research in the areas we were interested in was next to impossible.

When did I discover the word? I cannot pinpoint a date, or a year. Certainly an interest in ‘learning styles’ became fashionable in educational establishments in the 1980s and 1990s and I suspect ‘metacognition’ seeped into those discussions. Anyway, here we are today, with what is a very useful word. It is used in different ways - as a quick search on the internet will reveal.

Here at Effective Intelligence, we sum it up visually, like this:

* shortened form for the Dutch phrase meaning ‘Skilful Thinking’

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Bales

‡ Greig Barr, a historian, was a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, from 1945 1972; and Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, from 1972 to 1982.

** Once used as a fancy way to address Spanish nobles, the usage of the ‘Don’ title evolved to mean a distinguished gentleman.

*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Flavell