Metamemory through the adult life span.

Abstract

Metamemory, the ability to interrogate the contents of one's permanent memory, may be an important factor in using one's knowledge to cope with the environment. Metamemorial accuracy and efficiency can be assessed. Metamemory is accurate if it returns correct information about the contents in store. It is efficient if it appropriately controls search durations so that more time is allocated to seeking information actually present, less to information actually absent. Adult subjects in three age groups answered questions on heterogeneous topics, and their responses were timed. Next, metamemorial judgments were made for each subject's set of unanswered questions. The same items were then attempted in multiple-choice format, and confidence ratings in the answers were taken. All age groups showed comparable ability to retrieve answers from memory. All showed accurate and efficient metamemory, with no age differences in either. A signal detection analysis raised the possibility that metamemorial sensitivity increases with age. The data also suggested caution among the elderly in suppressing available but lowconfidence answers.

Adult Age Differences in Knowledge of Retrieval Processes

“…In contrast, retrieval monitoring reflects the accuracy of predicting the likelihood of retrieving the correct answer when provided with cues (in this case, either related information about the news event or phonological cues). In light of adult age differences in retrieval, the present study is most significant in differentiating between feeling-of-knowing, as defined and examined by past researchers [9][10][11][12][13][14] , and the new concept of retrieval monitoring.…”

“…The usual approach to assessing accuracy for feeling-of-knowing judgments involves examining the percentage of correct recognition choices for different rating categories [ 13]. Accurate judgments would be reflected in higher percentages for items that participants had originally missed but indicated they knew than for items associated with lower confidence ratings.…”

“…Examination of Lachman et a!. 's complete questionnaire indicated that the items fell into several broad categories-e.g., geography, mythology, literature [ 13]. It seemed that respondents could do fairly well by identifying which of the broad content areas were most familiar to them rather than by generating a feeling-of-knowing judgment for each particular answer.…”

“…Lachman et a!. suggested that accurate feeling-of-knowing judgments were especially important to elderly adults when their attempts at direct retrieval failed [ 13]. That is, elderly adults depend on accurate metamemory to guide processing associated with further search or inferences from related information.…”

“…Should one reasonably expect to find metamemorial deficits in the context of memory tasks with which older adults have little difficulty (i.e., recognition tasks)? Further, the hypothesis that me tamemory serves a compensatory function for elderly adults [ 13] seems to depend on the demonstration of good retrieval monitoring in addition to accurate feeling-of-knowing judgments. If they know little about the consequences of potential retrieval cues, it seems unlikely that older adults would generate or search for related information (cues) to compensate for initial recall failures.…”