Are age differences in recognition-based retrieval monitoring an epiphenomenon of age differences in memory?

Abstract

Older adults often demonstrate a monitoring deficit by producing more high-confidence memory errors on recognition memory tests. To eliminate lower memory performance by older adults (OA) as a candidate explanation, we studied how distinctive encoding enhances the retrieval-monitoring accuracy in older adults and younger adults (YA) under different delays (2-day delay for OA, 7-day delay for YA). Individuals viewed items consisting of four randomly selected exemplars (e.g., SALMON, BASS, PERCH, and SHARK) from a taxonomic category (e.g., FISH), one being designated as the to-be-remembered target. Participants were randomly assigned to two encoding conditions: Shared (generate a shared feature of all exemplars, e.g., GILLS) or Distinctive (generate a distinctive feature of the designated target). We collected retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs) after a five-alternative forced-choice (5AFC) recognition test, with the lures being either previously presented (old) exemplars or new category exemplars. Recall and recognition memory were better with distinctive encoding, with shared feature generation producing more high-confidence false alarms (HCFAs). Distinctive encoding dramatically reduced HCFAs and improved RCJ resolution. Comparison of OA with 2-day delay YA revealed age differences in HCFA consistent with previous studies. As important, age differences in memory for OA and 7-day delay YA were minimized, eliminating age deficits in HCFAs. Matching OAs to a subset of 7-day delay YAs on recognition memory produced additional evidence favoring the null hypothesis of age-equivalence in HCFAs. The results therefore indicated that age differences in recognition-based retrieval monitoring in a forced-choice recognition test are an epiphenomenon of age differences in memory.

Age-related decreases in global metacognition are independent of local metacognition and task performance

“…Given the established relationship between prefrontal function and metacognition, and frontal lobe theories of ageing (West, 1996, it might be expected that metacognition would also decay in older age. However, our finding that local metacognitive efficiency for memory or perception is stable across the lifespan is consistent with other prior work (Halamish et al, 2011, Hertzog and Hultsch, 2000, Hertzog et al, 2021, Connor et al, 1997, Zakrzewski et al, 2021. Our procedures used trial-by-trial staircasing of task difficulty to control subjects' task performance within a narrow range, allowing effective isolation of individual differences in metacognitive efficiency (Levitt, 1971, Fleming et al, 2010.…”

“…The reasons for finding decreases vs. increases in confidence in older age remain to be determined -but one key factor could be whether objective performance is adequately accounted for. Indeed, recent work has suggested that overconfidence effects in memory tasks may be an epiphenomenon of age-related changes in memory, rather than metamemory (Hertzog et al, 2021), with poorer recollection of contextual details leading directly to an over-generous misappraisal of memory performance (Hertzog and Dunlosky, 2011, Dodson et al, 2007, Soderstrom et al, 2012. Here, in a large age-stratified sample using tasks that were matched for performance using staircase procedures, we found global and local confidence decreased with age, despite performance remaining stable.…”

“…For instance, Palmer et al found that reductions in metacognitive efficiency with age -calculated as the meta-d'/d' ratio -were driven more by increases in d' than by decreases in meta-d' (Palmer et al, 2014). Preservation of metacognitive efficiency into older age is consistent with the idea that older people develop knowledge about their own memory structure and strategies for its use, leading to preserved metacognition (Hertzog et al, 2010, Hertzog and Dunlosky, 2011, Hertzog et al, 2021. Self-knowledge of one's behavioural and cognitive limitations, and of effective strategies for approaching cognitive tasks may in turn go some way to account for the preservation of first-order performance seen in older adults undertaking tasks in naturalistic, rather than laboratory, settings (Aberle et al, 2010, Rendell andCraik, 2000).…”

“…However, other research finds metamemory capacity deteriorates with age. For example, older adults are more likely to be overconfident in errors, and to overpredict their future learning performance (Dodson et al, 2007, Soderstrom et al, 2012, Hertzog et al, 2021, Cauvin et al, 2019. However it is possible that such effects on metamemory may be an epiphenomenon of age differences in memory (Dodson et al, 2007, Hertzog et al, 2021 -again emphasising the importance of controlling for first-order performance in studies of metacognitive ability.…”

I remember it like it was yesterday: Age-related differences in the subjective experience of remembering

“…Findings regarding age-related differences in confidence resolution are less clear. Some previous studies have revealed an age-related decrement in the monitoring (i.e., resolution) of subjective memory judgements (Kelley & Sahakyan, 2003;Wong et al, 2012) while other studies did not report any age-group difference (Hertzog et al, 2021).…”