Dr. Janet Metcalfe is the principal investigator in the Metacognition & Memory Lab. Her research is focused on metacognitive abilities, which is how people know what they know. It is evolutionarily advantageous for us, and for self-control. Here we discuss her background and research, session 1.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In terms of geography, culture, and language, where does your family background reside? How do you find this influencing your development?
Dr. Janet Metcalfe: I grew up in Toronto. And I think being a Canadian and having a good educational system is a very good thing for everyone, which is not as accessible here in the US as it is there.
Jacobsen: What motivated an interest in science and the mind?
Metcalfe: I have always been interested. In high school, I was one of those nerdy kids in the library reading Aristotle and Plato. But I was very naïve. I did not realize that there were actually people studying those kinds of issues in the universities.
It was not until much later that I realized I could actually do that with my life and not become a sales clerk, Lawyer, or some other field.
Jacobsen: How did you find your early study and investigation into the human mind?
Metcalfe: The first couple years, I was doing theater design at the nationale in Montreal as a designer. Theater design is pretty wonderful from the outside. From the inside, you have to be extraordinarily talented.
It is also very political. You have to be so amazing. I am in awe of people who can do it. You also have to starve for a long time to do it. The odds are very, very against you. I ended up doing a B.A. in costume design in Ottawa.
And doing the odd show in Ottawa, working in my spare time with a children’s program, and I loved being with children. It was so great. They were kids from Lower Town, Ottawa. There aren’t many slums in Ottawa, but I would not say this is a slum.
However, I would not say these kids were privileged. I would take them around to all of the various cultural events to try and give them an opportunity. Then I realized that I really loved doing that. I decided to go back to school and do things in learning.
I had to do my learning course at Ottawa. It was Behaviorism, but it was with rats and stuff. So that was out to sleep. I wanted to work with kids and know how they learn. Because we did not know; we still do not know. (Laughs)
We know a bit more. We did not know how to teach them. I was pretty convinced that the kids in Lower Town, if they could just get their grades up in school, then they would be on track. That would be their ticket. I went back to the University of Toronto. I started school again.
I sat myself in, although I did not know it, the University of Toronto and Stanford were the centers of memory research. I took a class and the professor–Bennet Murdock– asked, “I need a research assistant. Just come to my office if you want to be a research assistant.”
I went with ten other people. He decided simply on grades. That was me. So I got the position because I had the highest grades. So I was his research assistant. It was amazing! Because he was studying memory and the minds, how we think, and mathematical models of memory, I was put in, as an undergraduate, put in with his postdocs and Ph.D. students.
It was fantastic! He’s been my mentor ever since. He’s still in Toronto. He’s 92. I still see him from time to time. It was such luck. At the University of Toronto, there were so many great people at the time doing such wonderful, great research.
So I lucked into it. It was fun.
I applied to two schools for graduate school: York and Toronto. I really wanted to go to Toronto. I didn’t know, but people later told me that I’d get into Harvard. But I was a Canadian! (Laughs) It didn’t occur to me to go anywhere else.
It didn’t matter to me because I got into Toronto and it was a great place. It was very lucky for me.
Jacobsen: In terms of working in the academy as a woman, how did you find your early studies, research, and work? Have things changed?
Metcalfe: Yes, it is interesting. I was in Canada during my early time and I think there was a lot less discrimination in Canada than in the US at the time. I later taught both at Dartmouth and currently teaching at Columbia.
I could not have been a student at either of those places. In Canada, there was a tradition and some wonderful women in the department already. Well, there was one time. I had a baby in graduate school while I was doing my Master’s thesis. My Master thesis was published.
Jacobsen: Usually they were not published, at least at the University of Toronto. Mine was published. It was a very good thesis. They had a prize for the best thesis, but they gave it to a guy. They said that they gave it to the guy because his wife had a baby.
Metcalfe: That was the only time I thought, “My thesis was better than his was. And it was because his wife had a baby! (Laughs) I was writing this while in the hospital.” There were times when it was very rarefied. I was in the Society for Mathematical Psychology, where there were very few women, okay. I did not feel discriminated against.
There was simply a lack of women in it. I think it is pretty transparent. I think some of the women now helping women to have self-confidence, and not take personally rejection letters, are doing a great service. I do not think it has gone away.
But Canada was not so dead. Because there were some women in the department already, they had some pretty strong women there. I remember one woman there in her 60s. She had been in the field for a long time.
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Article originally published in on www.in-sightjournal.com and republished with permission from the author.
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