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What you're describing is Theory of Mind or the ability to represent others' representations. I took a class all about it with Kim Cassidy who did a lot of research in that subject. There are many different types of theory of mind and what you're describing is first order theory of mind. There is also second order theory of mind which is the ability to represent others' representations of someone elses' mental states. The ability to successfuly pass second order false belief tests comes around age 8 or so. Also, autistic children have a lot of difficulty with theory of mind tasks. Do they have compromised neocorteces?

Theory of mind is only one type of metacognition as it requires one to represent someone else's cognition. What about the ability to represent one's own cognition? I know that metacognitive skills are taught in some schools to help children realize what they understand and what they need to study more, etc... Are there any studies looking at these children's brains before and after these metacognitive lessons?