Hindsight bias, that is, the overestimation of one's prior knowledge of outcomes after the actual outcomes are known, is stronger in older than young adults (e.g., Bayen, Erdfelder, Bearden, & Lozito, 2006). The authors investigated whether age differences in the recall of original judgments account for this difference. Multinomial model-based analyses of data from a hindsight memory task revealed that biased reconstruction of original judgments was equally likely in both age groups when recall of original judgments was lowered in young adults via a manipulation of retention interval. These results support a recall-based explanation of age differences in hindsight bias.

Limited evidence is available that considers the role, value and use of social support within physical activity interventions for individuals with schizophrenia. Social support appears most likely to aid an individual's initiation, adherence and compliance to physical activity interventions. There may be an indirect benefit of social support on maintaining or enhancing health outcomes.

Hindsight bias is the overestimation of one's earlier knowledge about facts or one's prediction of events after learning about the actual facts or events. The authors examined age differences in hindsight bias and their relation to visual access control. Younger and older adults recalled their numerical answers to general-knowledge questions. For half of the items, the correct judgment (CJ) was shown during recall. To indicate whether the distracting CJ was visually accessed, the authors measured fixations to the CJ. An instructional manipulation to ignore the CJ affected fixations and hindsight bias. Older adults showed stronger hindsight bias and more fixations to the task-irrelevant CJ, indicating an age-related deficit in access control. However, evidence for the effect of CJ access on hindsight bias was weak and more pronounced in younger than in older adults.

No abstract

After people have learned a fact or the outcome of an event, they often overestimate their ability to have known the correct answer beforehand. This hindsight bias has two sources: an impairment in direct recall of the original (i.e., uninformed) judgment after presentation of the correct answer (recollection bias) and a reconstruction of the original judgment that is biased toward the correct answer (reconstruction bias). Research on how cognitive aging affects these two sources of hindsight bias has produced mixed results. To synthesize the available findings, we conducted a meta-analysis of nine studies (N = 366 young, N = 368 older adults). We isolated the probabilities of recollection, recollection bias, and reconstruction bias with a Bayesian, three-level hierarchical implementation of the multinomial processing tree model of hindsight bias (Erdfelder & Buchner, 1998). Additionally, we quantified the magnitude of bias in the reconstructed judgment. Overall, older adults were less likely to recollect their original judgment than young adults, and thus had to reconstruct it more frequently. Importantly, whereas outcome knowledge impaired recollection of the original judgment (i.e., recollection bias) to a similar extent in both age groups, outcome knowledge was more likely to distort reconstruction of the original judgment (i.e., reconstruction bias) in older adults. In addition, the magnitude of bias in the reconstructed judgments was slightly larger in older than in young adults. Our results provide the basis for a targeted investigation of the mechanisms driving these age differences.