Cognitive ability consists not only of one’s internal competence but also of the augmentation offered by the outside world. How much of our cognitive success is due to our own abilities, and how much is due to external support? Can we accurately draw that distinction? Here, we explored when and why people are unaware of their reliance on outside assistance. Across eight experiments (N = 2,440 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk), people showed improved metacognitive calibration when assistance occurred after a delay or required active choice. Furthermore, these findings apply across a wide range of cognitive tasks, including semantic memory (Experiments 1a and 1b), episodic memory (Experiments 2a and 2b), and problem solving (Experiments 3a–3d). These experiments offer important insights into how we understand our own abilities when we rely on outside help.

认知能力不仅包括一个人的内在能力，还包括外部世界提供的增强。我们的认知成功有多少是由于我们自己的能力，有多少是由于外部支持？我们能准确地划分出这种区别吗？在这里，我们探讨了人们何时以及为何不知道他们对外部援助的依赖。在八个实验中（N= 从 Amazon Mechanical Turk 招募的 2,440 名参与者），当延迟或需要主动选择后出现帮助时，人们表现出改善的元认知校准。此外，这些发现适用于广泛的认知任务，包括语义记忆（实验 1a 和 1b）、情景记忆（实验 2a 和 2b）和解决问题（实验 3a-3d）。这些实验为我们在依赖外部帮助时如何理解自己的能力提供了重要的见解。