ABSTRACT
Schema-driven decision making emphasizes the indispensability of (1) situation assessment in naturalistic settings, and (2) knowledge base, past experience, event sequence, and similarity recognition as cognitive components of situation assessment (Federico, 1995). A theoretically interesting research question is whether subjects' metacognitive models (Metecalfe & Shimamura, 1994) involving these salient elements of an abstract schema-driven decision-making process, are related to their performance on concrete experimental tasks requiring situation assessment. That is, within the metacognitive context of "cognition about cognition," but not on-going monitoring and control, are subjects' higher order cognitions about these crucial cognitive components at an abstract level correlated with their performance on experimental tasks necessitating situation assessment at a concrete level? If subjects are asked to indicate in their metacognitive models the perceived degree of importance of these cognitive components to situation assessment, then is the assigned saliency of each of these elements correlated with their performance on tasks where situation assessment is a prerequisite?
