Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Do I want to know the answer? Metacognitive control in younger and older adults

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Giovanna Marie Crystal Novi¹ (gmnovi25@colby.edu), Veronica McIntyre¹, Avery Lehneis¹, Alexis Lee², Jen Coane¹, Sharda Umanath²; ¹Colby College, ²Claremont McKenna College

The importance of metacognitive judgments lies in their potential to alert the individual about the contents of their memory and to inform behavioral decisions (i.e., metacognitive control). Interestingly, issues with metacognitive control have been used to explain some of the memory deficits observed in aging. We explored whether reporting different phenomenological experiences of retrieval failure during a general knowledge test predicts people’s choice to check the correct answer and their accuracy in a later memory test of the same questions. More specifically, we explored whether older and younger adults would make different behavioral decisions, and how these decisions would impact memory performance. Preliminary data showed that checking behavior changed as a function of retrieval failure. Because tip-of-the-tongue states (TOT) should naturally resolve, checking the answer when in a TOT may not be adaptive. However, TOTs were the most checked retrieval failure. We are conducting a follow-up study to explore whether curiosity influences checking behavior. Older adults checked more when expecting a recall memory test than a multiple-choice one. In contrast, younger adults did not change their checking behavior to adjust for memory test type. These findings contradict our predictions and will be followed up in a study containing manipulation checks and questions about reasons for checking. Our data also indicated that checking improves accuracy for only certain retrieval failure types, a relationship that varies with memory test type. These findings will be used to make predictions about the appropriate behavioral choices.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Development & aging