Metacognition and Reflexivity: which role for emotions?

The paper discusses the relationship between metacognition and reflexivity that are sometimes used as equivalent, in others as different. We refer to those theoretical strands that define reflexivity as a metacognitive competence consisting in having awareness of own thought processes in order to control them and to facilitate a functional adaptation to contexts (McAlpine et al., 1999; Moore, 2011). However, with reflexivity and metacognition we can mean two different levels of development and complexity according to which reflectivity would be a first stage in the process of metacognitive elaboration (Semerari et al., 2003), or it is possible to recognize points of congruence, but not of coincidence, between reflexivity and metacognition, if they are intended as procedural and intersubjective devices able to restart non adaptive situations of stasis. With reference to this last point, and beginning from the premise that cognitive activity can not be divorced from the emotional and relational matrix, the paper will discuss how the construct of mentalizing or reflexive function (Bateman, Fonagy, 2011) can be used to articulate and mediate the relationship between metacognitive and emotional processes within a relational and intersubjective field. These questions are declined through the exemplification of an action-research project conducted within university settings with groups of underachievers students late in the acquisition of CFU and with a low average to the exams. This action-research, part of an international project funded under the measure ERASMUS Multilateral Project, aimed to promote reflexive competence for First Level Degree students of the University of Naples Federico II. The training methodology has adopted the narrative device that has an empowering function the reflective process (Freda, 2008; Salvatore, Freda, 2011) and involved the use of narrative tools relating to four discoursive channels (metaphoric, iconographic, mediated by writing, bodily). We discuss the methodological steps that have allowed to explain the relationship between reflexivity and metacognition mediated by emotions.