Meta-prospective memory accuracy in older adults with and without suspected Mild Cognitive Impairment (sMCI).

This study examined if the relationship between generalized and task-specific appraisals of prospective memory (PM) and actual PM performance (i.e., meta-PM accuracy) differed between healthy and suspected Mild Cognitive Impairment (sMCI) older adults. Older adults recruited included 50 healthy and 31 sMCI participants from the community and an outpatient neuropsychology clinic. Data collected consisted of self-reported appraisals and task-specific predictions/postdictions of PM performance, objective PM performance, and executive functioning (EF). The sMCI group had significantly lower scores on objective PM and EF measures related to simple and complex task-switching. Moreover, sMCI participants displayed lower task-specific meta-PM accuracy in the direction of overconfidence, but they displayed relatively equivalent generalized meta-PM accuracy when compared to the healthy group. Notably, the sMCI group's task-specific inaccuracies became non-significant in relation to the healthy group on the final long-term PM tasks after exposure to metacognitive reflection on the first two PM tasks. Despite lower scores on EF measures, EF performance did not explain task-specific meta-PM differences between groups beyond neurocognitive status. Based on these data, sMCI patients may be better assisted by metacognitive calibration strategies, EF protocols, and the implementation of general compensatory memory strategies as targets for early intervention and prevention of neurocognitive decline.

So you think you can read? Generalized metacomprehension in younger and older adults.

This study explored whether age differences in task-specific metacomprehension accuracy are partly explained by age differences in generalized metacomprehension (GM) or the use of GM as a task-specific judgment anchor. GM was measured before and after a summarization and metacomprehension judgment task and then correlated with prediction judgment magnitude to assess anchoring, and correlated with comprehension and task-specific metacomprehension accuracy to assess GM accuracy. Age differences in these relationships were then tested. GM was related to judgment magnitude but despite age differences in GM ratings, age did not moderate anchoring or GM accuracy. Age differences in task-specific metacomprehension accuracy do not seem to be explained by age differences in GM accuracy or its use as a judgment anchor. However, results are the first to show that older adults anchor task-specific metacomprehension judgments on their GM, providing unique evidence for the Anchoring and Adjustment Model of Metacomprehension in advanced age.

Can an Aging Leopard Change Its Spots? The Role of Mindset of Aging on Implicit and Explicit Attitudes in Older Adults.

Growth mindset of aging (MA) refers to the belief that aging processes are malleable, while fixed MA is the belief that how one ages is predetermined and unchangeable. Using experimental methods, we manipulated MA and explored its impact on implicit old-age attitudes and self-perceptions of aging. Eighty-six older adults were randomly placed into a growth or fixed MA condition. Next, we assessed implicit old-age attitudes and self-perceptions of aging. The experimental manipulation was successful in that group MA scores differed, but MA did not significantly influence implicit old-age attitudes or self-perceptions of aging. However, a regression analysis revealed a novel finding: More growth MA was related to less negative implicit old-age attitudes and more positive self-perceptions of aging. These findings are an important contribution to the MA literature, which is in its infancy.

Meta-prospective memory accuracy in young adults with and without depressive symptoms.

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember an intention in the future. Individuals with depression are candidates for PM failures, resulting in detrimental consequences, such as forgetting to take a medication or implement therapeutic techniques; inaccurate assessments of one's PM abilities can exacerbate these issues. The current study examined if appraisals about one's prospective memory (meta-PM) performance differs between healthy and depressed adults. Data were gathered from 137 adults and included self-reported depression, PM beliefs, objective PM, and assessment of executive functions (EFs). Participants were separated into depressed/healthy categories based on a self-report measure. There was a non-significant correlation between self-reported PM and objective PM for both depressed (r = .06, p = .61) and healthy (r = .08, p = .52) groups, suggesting both groups had inaccurate meta-PM. There were non-significant differences in meta-PM between these groups (Fisher's Z = -0.09, p = .93), but exploratory gender analyses revealed women's meta-PM was significantly less accurate than men's. Women had higher reports of depression and PM complaints compared to men. This study lends evidence that depression is not necessarily related to worse meta-PM accuracy, despite depression's association with memory complaints, and that women are at greater risk for inaccurate meta-PM.

How Well Do You Think You Summarize? Metacomprehension Accuracy in Younger and Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: Metacomprehension monitoring accuracy in older age may be underestimated because of how it has been measured. Metacomprehension in the present study was uniquely measured by comparing summary quality to summary quality judgments. The effect of age on this accuracy was assessed and results were compared to those measured with the typical approach. The moderation of age effects by reading goal was also assessed but was an exploratory objective.1. METHOD: Younger adults (141) and older adults (138) read and orally summarized six expository texts. Participants were randomly assigned to a reading goal condition, with half of each age group summarizing for a professor/boss and half summarizing for an acquaintance. Participants made judgments about the quality of their summaries before and after summarizing, took a multiple-choice test of their comprehension, and made judgments about the accuracy of their answers. RESULTS: Age deficits in metacomprehension were generally smaller when measured with the novel approach and age differences were generally larger for the professor/boss condition than for the acquaintance condition. DISCUSSION: The novel approach to measuring metacomprehension monitoring accuracy provides more optimism for aging than typical approaches, discussed in relation to age-related changes in language processing preferences.

Orienting to face expression during encoding improves men's recognition of own gender faces.

It is unclear why women have superior episodic memory of faces, but the benefit may be partially the result of women engaging in superior processing of facial expressions. Therefore, we hypothesized that orienting instructions to attend to facial expression at encoding would significantly improve men's memory of faces and possibly reduce gender differences. We directed 203 college students (122 women) to study 120 faces under instructions to orient to either the person's gender or their emotional expression. They later took a recognition test of these faces by either judging whether they had previously studied the same person or that person with the exact same expression; the latter test evaluated recollection of specific facial details. Orienting to facial expressions during encoding significantly improved men's recognition of own-gender faces and eliminated the advantage that women had for male faces under gender orienting instructions. Although gender differences in spontaneous strategy use when orienting to faces cannot fully account for gender differences in face recognition, orienting men to facial expression during encoding is one way to significantly improve their episodic memory for male faces.

Recalled aspects of original encoding strategies influence episodic feelings of knowing.

We tested the hypothesis that the feeling of knowing (FOK) after a failed recall attempt is influenced by recalling aspects of the original encoding strategy. Individuals were instructed to use interactive imagery to encode unrelated word pairs. We manipulated item concreteness (abstract vs. concrete) and item repetitions at study (one vs. three). Participants orally described the mediator produced immediately after studying each item, if any. After a delay, they were given cued recall, made FOK ratings, and attempted to recall their original mediator. Concreteness and item repetition enhanced strategy recall, which had a large effect on FOKs. Controlling on strategy recall reduced the predictive validity of FOKs for recognition memory, indicating that access to the original aspects of encoding influenced FOK accuracy. Confidence judgments (CJs) for correctly recognized items covaried with FOKs, but FOKs did not fully track the strategy recall associations with CJs, suggesting emergent effects of strategy cues that were elicited by recognition tests but not accessed at the time of the FOK judgment. In summary, cue-generated access to aspects of the original encoding strategy strongly influenced episodic FOKs, although other influences were also implicated.

Older adults show deficits in retrieving and decoding associative mediators generated at study.

We instructed the use of mediators to encode paired-associate items, and then measured both cued recall of targets and mediators. Older adults (n = 49) and younger adults (n = 57) studied a mixed list of concrete and abstract noun pairs under instructions to either generate a sentence or an image to form a new association between normatively unrelated words. After each item was studied, they reported the mediator, if any, they had generated. After standard cued recall for each item, they were asked to recall their mediator. Large age differences (d = 1.52) occurred in mediator retrieval during a cued recall test. Older adults were less likely to retrieve mediators, and when they did, their retrieved mediators were more often gist-consistent than verbatim retrievals. Older adults were also more likely to report the wrong target word when correctly retrieving the mediator. Age differences in these decoding errors were large statistical effects, especially for abstract items (d = 1.41) relative to concrete items (d = 0.54). Older adults' associative memory deficits have more to do with retrieval mechanisms than with inadequate encoding strategies.

Cigarette abstinence impairs memory and metacognition despite administration of 2 mg nicotine gum.

The authors assessed the effects of cigarette abstinence (nonabstinent vs. minimum 8 hours abstinent) and nicotine gum (0 mg vs. 2 mg nicotine) on sustained attention, free recall, and metacognition using a within-subjects design. Moderate smokers (10 women and 22 men) received one training session followed by four test sessions on consecutive days. Nicotine gum improved sustained attention in both abstinent and nonabstinent states, but had no significant effect on predicted or actual recall levels. Cigarette abstinence significantly impaired free recall and reduced the magnitude of participants' predictions of their own performance. In addition, participants were significantly more overconfident about their future memory when abstinent. Thus, nicotine gum can improve smokers' performance in basic aspects of cognition (e.g., sustained attention) but may not alleviate the detrimental effects of cigarette abstinence on higher-level processes such memory and metacognition.