McWilliams, A;
Bibby, H;
Steinbeis, N;
David, AS;
Fleming, SM;
(2023)
Age-related decreases in global metacognition are independent of local metacognition and task performance.
Cognition
, 235
, Article 105389. 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105389.
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Abstract
Metacognition refers to a capacity to reflect on and control other cognitive processes, commonly quantified as the extent to which confidence tracks objective performance. There is conflicting evidence about how “local” metacognition (monitoring of individual judgments) and “global” metacognition (estimates of self-performance) change across the lifespan. Additionally, the degree to which metacognition generalises across cognitive domains may itself change with age due to increased experience with one's own abilities. Using a gamified suite of performance-controlled memory and visual perception tasks, we measured local and global metacognition in an age-stratified sample of 304 healthy volunteers (18–83 years; N = 50 in each of 6 age groups). We calculated both local and global metrics of metacognition and quantified how and whether domain-generality changes with age. First-order task performance was stable across the age range. People's global self-performance estimates and local metacognitive bias decreased with age, indicating overall lower confidence in performance. In contrast, local metacognitive efficiency was spared in older age and remained correlated across the two cognitive domains. A stability of local metacognition indicates distinct mechanisms contributing to local and global metacognition. Our study reveals how local and global metacognition change across the lifespan and provide a benchmark against which disease-related changes in metacognition can be compared.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Age-related decreases in global metacognition are independent of local metacognition and task performance |
| Location: | Netherlands |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105389 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105389 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. under a Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Aging, Domain-generality, Global metacognition, Local metacognition, Metamemory, Self-efficacy |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10165257 |
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