70 International Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence, 8(3), 70-86, July-September 2014 Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. ABSTRACT This paper presents a formal model of metacognitive reasoning in intelligent systems (IS). The proposed model was named fM 2 and uses predicate logic to represent a cycle of reasoning about failures generated in reasoning tasks in an IS. fM 2 has mechanisms such as introspective monitoring and meta-level control to perform metacognitive reasoning. fM 2 was implemented and validated on an intelligent tutoring system named FUNPRO. The performance metrics of FUNPRO indicate the capacity of fM 2 to drastically decrease the reasoning failures produced in the recommendations of FUNPRO. Thus, this paper demonstrates the ef- fcacy of fM 2 as a valid tool to improve the performance of the reasoning processes of IS. A Formal Model for Metacognitive Reasoning in Intelligent Systems Manuel F. Caro, Departamento de Informática Educativa, Universidad de Córdoba, Montería, Montería, Colombia Darsana P. Josyula, Department of Computer Science, Bowie State University, Bowie, MD, USA Jovani A. Jiménez, Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación y la Decisión, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín, Medellín, Colombia Keywords: Artifcial Intelligence, Cognitive Reasoning, Intelligent Tutoring System, Meta-Level Control, Metacognitive Reasoning 1. INTRODUCTION Cognitive Informatics is a multidisciplinary research area that investigates the internal information processing mechanisms of the brain and natural intelligence shared by almost all science and engineering disciplines (Wang, 2007). Cognitive Computing is an emerging paradigm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on Cognitive Informatics, that implements compu- tational intelligence by autonomous inferences and perceptions mimicking the mechanisms of the brain and natural intelligence (Wang et al., 2010). Metacognition in Cognitive Computing refers to the capability of Intelligent Systems (IS) to monitor and control their own learning and reasoning processes. Reasoning and learn- ing processes are two higher level cognitive functions of natural intelligence. Metacognition allows IS to gain awareness of knowledge about cognition and control of cognition. Now a days increasingly complex IS that make decisions based on multiple variables are being developed. The complexity increases the DOI: 10.4018/IJCINI.2014070105