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Historical retrospective demonstrates the conceptual evolution of metamemory into metacognition and theory of mind, highlighting John Flavell’s foundational influence on developmental psychology.
I met John Flavell in January of 1971, when he was about midway in his time at the Institute of Child Development, before moving from the University of Minnesota to go to Stanford. At that time he created the field of metamemory, which quickly morphed into metacognition more broadly, and then for some of us morphed more broadly still to become theory of mind. In all this, Flavell was always concerned with his students’ lives and careers and concerned with development – how earlier insights transformed into later more mature ones.
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Henry M. Wellman (2026) studied this question.
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