A lifespan study of the confidence–accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory.

Abstract

The relation between an individual's memory accuracy and reported confidence in their memories can indicate self-awareness of memory strengths and weaknesses. We provide a lifespan perspective on this confidence-accuracy relation, based on two previously published experiments with 320 participants, including children aged 6-13, young adults aged 18-27, and older adults aged 65-77, across tests of working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM). Participants studied visual items in arrays of varying set sizes and completed item recognition tests featuring 6-point confidence ratings either immediately after studying each array (WM tests) or following a long period of study events (LTM tests). Confidence-accuracy characteristic analyses showed that accuracy improved with increasing confidence for all age groups and in both WM and LTM tests. These findings reflect a universal ability across the lifespan to use awareness of the strengths and limitations of one's memories to adjust reported confidence. Despite this age invariance in the confidence-accuracy relation, however, young children were more prone to high-confidence memory errors than other groups in tests of WM, whereas older adults were more susceptible to high-confidence false alarms in tests of LTM. Thus, although participants of all ages can assess when their memories are weaker or stronger, individuals with generally weaker memories are less adept at this confidence-accuracy calibration. Findings also speak to potential different sources of high-confidence memory errors for young children and older adults, relative to young adults. Public Significance StatementOur ability to accurately evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our memories is critical to how we make decisions and can influence how much confidence other people can place in our reported experiences, as in eyewitness testimony. The present study reveals a strikingly universal ability of individuals from young childhood to older adulthood in calibrating their confidence in their memory with their observed accuracy in recognition. However, young children and older adults are more susceptible to high-confidence memory errors, but during different phases of memory retention, with young children's high-confidence errors arising in working memory and those of older adults appearing mostly in longterm memory. These findings suggest that different mechanisms underlie why young children and older adults generally have poorer memory than adolescents and young adults.

The time course of encoding specific and gist episodic memory representations among young and older adults.

“…A plausible interpretation of these results is that older adults are occasionally overconfident about what or how much information they have retained. This interpretation is compatible with the “misrecollection account” of Dodson et al (2007), according to which older adults erroneously believe, often with high confidence, that they had previously experienced events that never truly occurred (cf., Fandakova et al, 2013; Greene et al, 2022, 2024). However, there are certain conditions under which older adults’ erroneous misrecollections are most likely to arise.…”

“…Older adults are typically excellent at evaluating the accuracy of their memories for general facts or knowledge (Marquié & Huet, 2000; Perlmutter, 1978; Pliske & Mutter, 1996) but are much poorer at evaluating the accuracy of their memories for specific episodes (Dodson & Krueger, 2006; Dodson et al, 2007; Fandakova et al, 2013). Yet even these metacognitive failures for specific episodes depend on several factors, including the degree of specific information older adults must remember about a given episode (Greene et al, 2022) and how much time has elapsed between encoding and retrieval (Greene et al, 2024). Regarding the former, older adults’ recognition accuracy improves with increases in their reported confidence in their recognition responses on tests for which the retrieval of the gist of a prior episode is sufficient (e.g., in recognizing whether an unrelated probe had been studied).…”

“…However, on tests for which the retrieval of specific details of a previous episode is required (e.g., in recognizing whether a related probe had been studied), older adults are prone to high-confidence recognition errors (Greene et al, 2022). Meanwhile, older adults can reliably evaluate the accuracies of their memories for specific episodes immediately after encoding but are much poorer judges when attempting to retrieve episodes from long-term memory (Greene et al, 2024).…”