DEPRESSION, COGNITIVE SKILL, AND METACOGNITIVE SKILL IN PROBLEM-SOLVING

Two experiments investigated the relationship between four factors: depression; two types of metacognitive skill; and cognitive skill. Experiment 1 manipulated depression in 40 college students with a Velten procedure to examine its effects on three skills: the ability to accurately answer certain types of math problems (cognitive skill); the ability to accurately predict one's ability to answer the problems (metacognitive knowledge about cognition); and the ability to accurately rate one's performance after attempting to answer the problems (metacognitive monitoring of cognitive performance). Experiment 2 measured these skills in 48 college students with severe, mild, and no depression. As predicted, the results of both studies indicated that depressed subjects were less skilful than nondepressed subjects on both types of metacognitive abilities. Metacognitive skills were not correlated with cognitive skill, supporting the unique nature of metacognitive skills. In addition, level of depression and metacognitive skill were not related to differences in response bias or performance expectancy. The implications for various models of depression are discussed.