File:The Construction of Abstract Intelligence & the Origins of Metacognition.png

English: Illustration showing how the social, temporal and material domains of cognition (BA9, 10 and 47) form lower-order concepts (see: Social EI, Concepts 1–4; Practical PI Concepts 1–4; Temporal TI, Concepts 1–4) from our perceptions of the world around us. These concepts are lower-order because they are derived from the realities in the psychosocial, temporal and physical realms of existence (ellipses). The abstract mind (BA46-9/46) creates higher-order concepts or “metaconcepts” (α, β and γ) from a synthesis of the conceptual products of the social, temporal and material domains of thought. In this way the abstract mind essentially thinks about the cognitive products of the other three environmentally-linked domains of cognition, thereby creating the almost exclusively human faculty of metacognition.