Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Gerontology and Vulnerability (CIGEV), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Cortex. 2024 Dec;181:119-132. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.09.014. Epub 2024 Oct 28.
This study explored the role of metacognition in the so-called "age-prospective memory (PM) paradox" by investigating the accuracy of younger and older adults' predictions of their future PM performance in time-based tasks performed across laboratory and naturalistic settings. Metacognitive monitoring was assessed by asking participants to make judgments-of-learning (JOLs) on an item level for both the prospective (remembering that something has to be done) and retrospective (remembering what to do) components of PM. In terms of PM performance, the results for the prospective component revealed an age deficit in the laboratory-based task and an age benefit in the naturalistic task, in line with the age-PM paradox. In terms of metacognition, important age differences were found across settings. In particular, the results pointed to poor resolution of JOLs made by older adults in the laboratory and by younger adults in the naturalistic setting. This suggests that younger and older participants could not discriminate between items they would later hit or miss but did so in different settings. Furthermore, although both age groups exhibited overconfidence in the naturalistic setting, this bias was significantly stronger for the younger adults. This might explain the observed differences in performance. That is, the advantage older adults have in naturalistic tasks may stem from a better ability to predict performance in this setting compared to younger adults, who tend instead to heavily overestimate their capabilities and may therefore not engage in appropriate strategies or planning. These findings speak to the functional relevance of metacognitive monitoring processes for PM performance and suggest considering metacognition as a key factor in explaining the age-PM paradox.
本研究通过考察年轻和年长成年人在实验室和自然环境中完成基于时间的任务时，对其未来 PM 表现的预测准确性，探讨了元认知在所谓的“年龄前瞻性记忆 (PM) 悖论”中的作用。通过要求参与者对前瞻性（记住必须做某事）和回溯性（记住要做什么）PM 的项目水平做出学习判断 (JOL)，来评估元认知监测。就 PM 表现而言，前瞻性成分的结果显示，在基于实验室的任务中存在年龄缺陷，而在自然任务中存在年龄优势，这与年龄-PM 悖论一致。就元认知而言，在不同的环境中发现了重要的年龄差异。特别是，结果表明，年长成年人在实验室和年轻成年人在自然环境中做出的 JOL 分辨率较差。这表明，年轻和年长的参与者无法区分他们以后会击中或错过的项目，但在不同的环境中可以做到这一点。此外，尽管两个年龄组在自然环境中都表现出过度自信，但年轻成年人的这种偏见更为明显。这可能解释了观察到的表现差异。也就是说，与年轻成年人相比，年长成年人在自然任务中具有优势，这可能源于他们在这种环境中预测表现的能力更强，而年轻成年人往往过度高估自己的能力，因此可能不会采取适当的策略或计划。这些发现说明了元认知监测过程对 PM 表现的功能相关性，并表明将元认知视为解释年龄-PM 悖论的关键因素。
