No abstract
Age differences in accuracy were investigated by having older (M = 68.6 years) and younger (M = 21.5 years) adults make confidence judgments about the correctness of their responses to two sets of general knowledge items. For one set, prior to making their confidence judgments, subjects made mental strategy judgements indicating how they had selected their answers (i.e., they guessed, used intuition, made an inference, or immediately recognized the response as correct). Results indicate that older subjects were more accurate than younger subjects in predicting the correctness of their responses; however, making mental strategy judgments did not result in increased accuracy for either age group. Additional analyses explored the relationship between accuracy and other individual difference variables. The results of this investigation are consistent with recent theories of postformal cognitive development that suggest older adults have greater insight into the limitations of their knowledge.
The present investigation was condueted to determine whether subjects could use categorical codes based on semantic memory information (gender of names) to make rapid decisions about the order of names in a linear series. Subjects were taught linear order problems in which 12 names (six male and six female) were either randomly ordered or blocked by sex. The results support a dual-process model which proposes that subjects use both categorical information (discrete linguistic codes) and serial position information when asked to make mental comparisons of arbitrarily ordered items. Furthermore, the data indicate that both the ordinal distance between the terms in the test pair (step size] and the serial position of the test terms in the linear order affect the reaction time to a particular test comparison.Recent studies of mental comparisons have eonsistently found that, when eomparing two items on a particular dimension (e.g., size, height, etc.), the more discrepant the two stimuli, the easier the comparison. This phenomenon is known as the distance effect (Potts, Banks, Kosslyn, Moyer, Riley, & Smith, 1978). Much of the research concerning the distance effeet has involved the retrieval and use of information in semantic memory. For example, digits (Moyer & Landauer, 1967), animal names (Moyer, 1973), and object names (Paivio, 1975) were used as stimuli in these studies. It is also possible to teach subjects an arbitrarily ordered sequence, test them on comparisons, and still obtain the distance effect. For example, Potts (1972) presented subjects with a paragraph that contained several sentences of the form, "The X was friendlier than the Y," where X and Y were animal names. After studying the paragraph, subjects were asked to make pairwise comparisons. As in previous studies, reaction time decreased as the distance between the items on the imposed scale increased.Many different models have been proposed to account for the distance effect. These models can be grouped into the following categories: analog models, discrete coding models, dual-process models, and serial position models. Each model makes certain assumptions This report is based on a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
In this study, we investigated age differences in the accuracy of covariation judgement. Young and older adults were asked to solve covariation problems under low or high memory demand conditions. For each problem, subjects saw a sequential presentation of the event-state combination in a 2 X 2 contingency table. Subjects either kept a running tally of the frequencies of occurrence of each combination and used these tallies to make their covariation judgement for the events (Low Memory Demand), or they recalled the frequencies from memory, and then made their judgement (High Memory Demand). Solution patterns across the problems indicated which of four judgement strategies (i.e., Cell A, A vs B, Sum of Diagonals, or Conditional Probability) the subject preferred. The results showed that older adults were generally less accurate than young adults in judging event covariation. Additional findings suggested that this difference might be due to an age-related decline in memory for the frequency of event combinations and to older adults' use of simpler, less accurate judgement strategies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.