The impact of metacognitive monitoring feedback on mental workload and situational awareness

Abstract

The need to develop more effective feedback has become a growing concern in training. Feedback should be designed to provide meaningful information in order to help them improve their performance. On the other hand, the feedback should be designed not to increase the learners’ mental workload even while they maximize the benefits of using such feedback during training. Recently, Kim [1] developed the metacognitive monitoring feedback method. This methodology was tested in a computer-based training environment. The authors’ results showed that metacognitive monitoring feedback significantly improved participants’ performance during two days of a training session. However, the previous study did not investigate the impact of metacognitive monitoring feedback on participants’ mental workload and situational awareness. Hence, in this study, we investigated those needs and found a negative relationship between situational awareness and workload when the trainees observed the metacognitive monitoring feedback.