When learners observe their reactions during challenging tasks, they engage in:

Concept

Metacognition is awareness and regulation of one's own thinking and learning processes.

Monitoring is the metacognitive act of noticing and assessing thoughts, feelings, understanding, or reactions while an activity is in progress.

Application

Here, learners deliberately observe their own reactions while performing a challenging task. That self-observation is monitoring of their cognition and learning, so the process is metacognitive monitoring.

Contrast

• Sensory habituation means a response becomes weaker after repeated exposure to an unchanged stimulus.

• Procedural learning is the acquisition of skills or action sequences through practice.

• Mechanical repetition is repeated rehearsal without deliberate reflection on one's own learning.

Cross-check

The defining clue is that learners observe themselves during the task. This matches monitoring of one's own cognition rather than adaptation to a stimulus, skill acquisition, or rote rehearsal.

Therefore, the process is metacognitive monitoring.