Final answer:
Monitoring and controlling one's own mental processes is known as metacognition. It involves self-awareness and the ability to critically assess one's own cognitive processes, which includes activities such as planning and inferring.
Step-by-step explanation:
Monitoring and controlling one's own mental processes is known as metacognition. Metacognition involves higher-order thinking skills that enable individuals to regulate, monitor, and critically analyze their own thought processes. This cognitive strategy involves self-awareness and the ability to assess one's cognitive processes critically. Activities associated with metacognition include checking, planning, selecting, inferring, self-interrogating, and interpreting ongoing experiences to make judgments about what one knows and doesn't know. Self-regulation, which is closely related to metacognition, is also a form of cognitive control, where individuals use internal and external feedback to pursue goals and maximize goal attainment. This process includes the ability to delay gratification, often described as willpower.