Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri.
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2024 May;153(5):1336-1360. doi: 10.1037/xge0001551. Epub 2024 Mar 7.
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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
个体记忆准确性与对记忆准确性的报告信心之间的关系可以表明对记忆强弱的自我意识。我们基于之前发表的两项实验，从生命周期的角度探讨了这种信心与准确性的关系，这两项实验共有 320 名参与者，包括 6-13 岁的儿童、18-27 岁的年轻人和 65-77 岁的老年人，他们参与了工作记忆 (WM) 和长时记忆 (LTM) 的测试。参与者在不同大小的数组中学习视觉项目，并完成项目识别测试，测试中使用 6 分制的置信度评分，这些测试可以在学习完每个数组后立即进行（WM 测试），也可以在经历长时间的学习事件后进行（LTM 测试）。置信度-准确性特征分析表明，所有年龄组在 WM 和 LTM 测试中，随着置信度的增加，准确性都有所提高。这些发现反映了个体在整个生命周期中普遍存在一种能力，即利用对自身记忆的优缺点的认识来调整报告的信心。然而，尽管信心与准确性的关系在各年龄段中没有变化，但与其他群体相比，年幼的儿童在 WM 测试中更容易出现高置信度的记忆错误，而老年人在 LTM 测试中更容易出现高置信度的错误警报。因此，尽管所有年龄段的参与者都能够评估自己的记忆何时较弱或较强，但记忆力总体较弱的个体在这种信心与准确性的校准方面不那么熟练。研究结果还表明，年幼的儿童和老年人的高置信度记忆错误可能与年轻人有不同的来源。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2024 APA，保留所有权利）。
