Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D
GEC007 FIRST-SEMESTER FINALS:
Mrs. Ma. Veronica Cruzada
TOPIC 9: MANAGING AND CARING FOR
THE SELF
Learning To Be a Better Learner
What is Metacognition?
 Defined as thinking about thinking
 Pertains to the awareness of the scope
and limitations of your current
knowledge and skills (what you know at
the moment)
 Enables the person to adapt to their
existing knowledge and skills to
approach a learning task, seeking for the
optimum result of the learning
experience (apply and innovate)
 Includes keeping one’s emotions and
motivations while learning in check
 The goal of metacognition is for the
student to become a self-regulated
learner.
Example: Juliana not only applied the
knowledge she acquired in school, but she
even furthered her knowledge by trying it
out in different ways.
2 Types of Intelligence
 Fluid Intelligence
o Global Capacity to reason
o Ability to learn new things
o Think abstractly and solve
problems
 Crystallized Intelligence
o Prior learning and past
experiences
o Based on facts
o Increases with age
Two Aspects of Metacognition
 Self-Appraisal
-is your personal reflection on your
knowledge and capabilities (what are my
strengths and weaknesses)
 Self-Management
-is the mental process you employ using
what you have in planning and adapting
to successfully learn or accomplish a
certain task (what can I do to make it
work)
Variables That Affect How You Know Or
Assess Yourself As A Thinker:
• Personal Variable
 is your evaluation of your strengths and
weaknesses in learning (What can I do
and cannot do?)
• Task Variable
 is what you know or what you think
about the nature of the task, as well as
what strategies the task requires (Is this
task too difficult or too easy for me to
do?)
• Strategy Variable
 refers to what strategies or skills you
already have in dealing with certain
tasks (How do I intend to do it?)
 You must have an accurate self-
assessment—you must be honest about
what you know and capable of in order
to find ways to utilize your strengths and
improve on your weaknesses.
Skills In Exercising Metacognition
• Knowing your limits.
- The scope and limitations of your
resources so that you can work with
what you have at the moment and look
for ways to cope with other necessities
• Modifying your approach.
- The recognition that your strategy is not
appropriate with the task, to modify
GEC007
Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D
your strategy in comprehending your
material
• Skimming.
- Browsing over a material and keeping an
eye on keywords, phrases, or sentences.
It is also about knowing where to search
for such key terms.
• Rehearsing.
- It’s not just about repeatedly talking,
writing, and/or doing what you have
learned, but also trying to make a
personal interpretation or summary of
the learning experience.
• Self-Test.
- Trying to test your comprehension of
your learning experience or the skills
you have acquired during learning.
 Other strategies that you need to
develop include asking questions about
your methods, self-reflection, finding a
mentor or support group if necessary,
thinking out loud, and welcoming errors
as learning experiences.
Other Helpful Tips For Studying
1. Make an outline of the things you want to
learn, the things you are reading or doing,
and/or the things you remember.
2. Break down the task in smaller and more
manageable details.
3. Integrate variation in your schedule and
learning experience. Change reading material
every hour and do not put similar topics
together.
4. Try to incubate your ideas (to let it grow --
shaping the idea).
5. Revise, summarize, and take down notes,
then reread them to help you minimize
cramming in the last minute.
6. Engage what you have learned.
TOPIC 10: GOAL-SETTING
Do Not Just Dream, Make It Happen
Albert Bandura’s Self-efficacy Theory
The Bobo Doll Experiment
 Sample children were presented with
new social models of violent and
nonviolent behavior toward an inflatable
redounding Bobo doll.
 Results: The group of children who saw
the violent behavior model became
violent to the doll, while the control
group presented nonviolent behavior
model to the doll.
 This experiment has proven right the
hypothesis that social modeling is a very
effective way of learning.
 Bandura’s social cognitive theory states
that people are active participants in
their environment and are not simply
shaped by that environment.
What Is Self-Efficacy?
 Self-efficacy typically comes into play
when there is an actual or perceived
threat to one’s personal safety, or one’s
ability to deal with potentially aversive
events.
 Dr. Bandura defined self- efficacy as
“people’s beliefs about their capabilities
to produce designated levels of
performance that exercise influence over
events that affect their lives.”
Response-Outcome Expectancies Vs.
Efficacy Expectation:
 Outcome expectancy is “a person’s
estimate that a given behavior will lead
to certain outcomes.”
o (Studying hard will lead me to
graduate 4 years from now)
 Efficacy expectation is “the conviction
that one can successfully execute the
GEC007
Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D
behavior required to produce the
outcomes.”
o (I must study hard so that I will
be able to graduate 4 years from
now.)
Outcome and efficacy expectations are
differentiated because individuals can believe
that a particular course of action will produce
certain outcomes.
People With High Self-Efficacy
1. Approach difficult tasks as challenges to be
mastered;
2. Set challenging goals and maintain strong
commitment to them;
3. Heighten or sustain efforts in the face of
failures or setbacks;
4. Attribute failure to insufficient effort or
deficient knowledge and skills which are
acquirable; and
5. Approach threatening situations with
assurance that they can exercise control over
them.
People With Low Self-Efficacy
1. View as task as personal threats;
2. Low aspirations and weak commitment to
goals they choose to pursue;
3. Dwell on personal deficiencies, rather than
concentrating on how to perform successfully;
4. Slacken their efforts and give up quickly in
the face of difficulties;
5. Slow to recover their sense of efficacy
following failure or setbacks; and
6. Fall easy victim to stress and depression.
Carol S. Dweck’s Fixed and Growth
Mindset Theory
Two types of mindset:
 People who believe that success is based
on their innate abilities have a “fixed”
theory of intelligence, and goes under
fixed mindset. (Nature only)
o Fixed-mindset individuals dread
failure because it is a negative
statement on their basic abilities;
 People who believe that success is based
on hard work, learning, training, and
perseverance have growth theory of
intelligence, which goes under growth
mindset. (Nurture)
o Growth-mindset individuals do
not mind or fear failure as much
because they realize their
performance can be improved
and learning comes from failure.
Individuals may not necessarily be aware of
their own mindset, but their mindset can still
be discerned based on their behavior.
Edwin A. Locke’s Goal Setting Theory
1. The more difficult the goal, the greater
the achievement.
2. The more specific or explicit the goal,
the more precisely performance is
regulated.
3. Goals that are both specific and difficult
lead to the highest performance.
4. Commitment to goals is most critical
when goals are specific and difficult.
5. High commitment to goals is attained
when:
 the individual is convinced that
the goal is important; and
 the individual is convinced that
the goal is attainable (or that, at
least, progress can be made
toward it).
6. In addition to having a direct effect on
performance, self- efficacy influences:
 the difficulty level of the goal
chosen or accepted;
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Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D

 commitment to goals; 13. Goal-setting and goal-related

 the response to negative mechanisms can be trained and/or
feedback or failure and adopted in the absence of training for
 the choice of task strategies. the purpose of self-regulation.

7. Goal setting is most effective when there
is feedback that shows progress in
relation to the goal.
8. Goal setting (along with self-efficacy)
mediates the effect of knowledge of past
performance on subsequent
performance.
9. Goals affect performance by affecting
the direction of action, the degree of
effort exerted, and the persistence of
action over time.
14. Goals serve as standards of self-
satisfaction, with harder goals
demanding higher accomplishment in
order to attain self-satisfaction than easy
goals. Goals can also be used to enhance
task interest, reduce boredom, and
promote goal clarity. When used to
punish or intimidate people, however,
goals increase stress and anxiety.

10. Goals stimulate planning in general.

Often, the planning quality is higher
than that which occurs without goals.
When people possess task or goal-
relevant plans as a result of experience
or training, they activate them
automatically when confronted with a
performance goal. Newly learned plans
or strategies are most likely to be
utilized under the stimulus of a specific,
difficult goal.

11. When people strive for goals on complex

tasks, they are least effective in
discovering suitable task strategies if:
 they have no prior experience or
training on the task;
 there is high pressure to perform
well; and
 there is high time pressure (to
perform well immediately). Topic 11:
MINDFULNESS AND MENTAL HEALTH
12. Goals (including goal commitment), in
combination with self-efficacy, mediate The Problem
or partially mediate the effects of several  Every day, students are bombarded with
personality traits and incentives on distractions that can keep them from
performance. concentrating on the work they need to
do.

GEC007
Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D

 Mindfulness is a remedy for these  Increased focus

distractions that promotes living in the o people who practice mindfulness
present and focusing on what’s going on and meditation are more likely to
right now. focus on tasks and avoid
distractions.
 In addition to increasing awareness, o According to research in
mindfulness helps people avoid being Conscious and Cognition that
overwhelmed and overly reactive to compared study participants that
what they’re experiencing from one practiced mindfulness meditation
moment to the next. to those who didn’t, the
mindfulness group had attention
spans and cognitive flexibility.
The Beginning
 Mindfulness has enjoyed a tremendous  Improved Memory
surge in popularity in the past decade, o Having a sharp memory is
both in the popular press and in the necessary for high academic
psychotherapy literature. performance, and practicing
mindfulness can go a long way
 The practice has moved from a largely toward increasing students’
obscure Buddhist concept founded ability to remember their course
about 2,600 years ago to a mainstream material.
psychotherapy construct today. o A study in Psychological Science
found that students who did
mindfulness exercises had
Defining Mindfulness increased short-term memory.
 a psychological state of awareness, the They were also less susceptible to
practices that promotes this awareness, distractions and had
and a mode of processing information improvements in verbal
and a character (Davis and Hayes; APA, reasoning.
2012).
 Reduced rumination
 a moment-to-moment awareness of  Stress reduction
one's experience without judgment.  Boost working memory
 Improve focus
Benefits of Mindfulness for College  Less emotional reactivity
Students  More cognitive flexibility
 Relief from stress and anxiety  Relationship satisfaction
o Can help reduce anxiety by  Enhance self-insight
lowering the stress hormones in  Morality
the body.  Intuition
o In a study published in the  Fear modulation
International Journal of Stress
Management, a group of nurses  Health benefits:
who participated meditation o increased immune functioning
reported that their work-related (Davidson et al., 2003; see
anxiety decreased. Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt, &
Walach, 2004)
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Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D

o improvement to well-being  Acknowledge to yourself what you are

(Carmody & Baer, 2008)
o reduction in psychological distress
(Coffey & Hartman, 2008; Ostafin et
al., 2006).
o Increase information processing
speed (Moore & Malinowski, 2009).
feeling. All feelings are normal so accept
whatever you are feeling.
 Find someone who listens and is
accepting. You do not need advice, you
need to be heard
 Maintain your normal routine
 Allow plenty of time for a task

Take good care of yourself:

 Get enough rest and sleep

 Eat regularly and make healthy choices
 Know your limits and when you need to
let go
 Identify or create a nurturing place in
your home
 Escape for a while through meditation,
reading a book, watching a movie, or
taking a short trip

Caution
How To Incorporate Mindfulness To  Mindfulness should not replace proper
College Life medication or doctor’s prescriptions.
 Mindfulness is not a one-size-fits-all
 Taking deep breaths helps to slow down solution. We need to step back and be
the mind and heart rate, which can go a discerning about what is good and
long way toward alleviating stress. where we need to be cautious.
 Maintaining a Gratitude Journal can  Mindfulness is a state and not a trait.
cut through the negativity and remind
students of the good things that are
going on in their lives, despite the stress.
 Paying attention to nature can help
them enjoy the moment they’re in,
rather than worrying about what they
need to do next.
 Doing one thing at a time can help the
students be mindful of their work be
prioritizing tasks and putting their full
attention on one thing at a time.
 Visualizing or visualization in a form of
seeing themselves acing a test, getting
good grade on a paper, or raising their
GPA will help them increase their level
of self-confidence.

GEC007
Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D

• Vigilance: stay alert, response level does

not go down immediately
o Cortisol: hormone secreted by
body in stress
o When vigilant, builds up in your
body’s fluids.

Predictors of Stress

 Negative situations (Distress)

 Positive situations (Eustress)
 Personality—some are less able to adapt
to stress
o Introverts do not habituate well
o Less reactive people can handle
stress
 Hassles—regular demands or
inconveniences

• Secondhand stress
o People surrounding you are stressed
o Women are more affected by this than
men—women express, men withdraw.

Negative Signs of Stress

 Emotional signs
o Irritability
 People are low
information processors—
max out on info
Topic 12: processing when stressed
STRESS: WHAT IS IT AND HOW TO b/c constantly thinking of
DEAL WITH IT? things
 More information makes
“Stress” you angry, see everything
as serious
 A combination of thoughts and worries  Sadness, depression
that have negative affect on the body’s  Apathy -- lack of interest
responses.  Anxiety
o Free-floating anxiety: constantly
Phases of Stress waiting for the other shoe to drop
 Mental fatigue
• Alarm: sudden response to danger o Forget things, what you meant to
o Adrenaline rush followed by do
quick decrease when danger  Overcompensate or live in denial by
passes taking on extra work

GEC007
Understanding The Self
Lakisha P. Silatan MLS1D
 Behavioral
o Avoidance
 Other people stimulate us, so
we stay away
o Do things to extremes
 What do you do too much
of when stressed?
o Cause oneself administrative,
legal problems
o Rushing leads to accidents
 How could this affect your
family?
 Physical
o Sleep too much, too little
o Weight issues
o Headaches, migraines
o Digestive problem
o Aches and pains
o Get sick more because immune
system is low
o Over self-medicate
o Injuries
o Physical exhaustion—cannot get
enough sleep
Coping With Stress
A. Time and situation management
o Gather feedback about how you
spend time
PRIORITIZE
o What has the least consequence if
you don’t do it?
B. Physiological and Behavior Strategies
o Keep fit and avoid sickness
 How does exercise help?
o Activity makes us tired—sleep
better
o Eat well (more “good for you”
foods) to metabolize better
o Get rid of germs with healthy
habits
 Flu shots
 Wash hands
 Gargle with salt water
o Relaxation techniques
C. Cognitive methods—change how you
think
 Replace irrational beliefs with
reasonable thoughts
• i.e., Perfectionism or total self-
reliance, acceptance of fallibility, and
asking others for help
 Take a problem-solving approach—don’t
just wallow in self-pity
 Learn to say “No” and be assertive
 Mindfulness
Communication Attributes of Less
Stressed People
• Self-disclose appropriately to a friend
• Use positive self-statements and
surround selves with positive people
• 4 C’s
o Commitment: what you do is
important
o In Control: internal locus of
control, make choice to reduce
stress
o Challenge: view potential
stressors as challenges, not
problems
• Conscientiousness: stay on task early on,
get over stress early.
• Less Stress, Care More
o We should be in control of the
stress that confronts us every
day. Otherwise, when we are
overwhelmed by stress, it can
be detrimental to our health.
• Self-care and self-compassion
o are two ways to positively
confront stress. We should
love and care for our self,
more and more each day.
GEC007