Varieties of learning and developmental theories of memory
Romain Meeusen, Sabine Schaefer, Phillip Tomporowski, Richard Bailey in Physical Activity and Educational Achievement, 2017
Metamemory refers to knowledge about one’s memory processes (Flavell, 1971). The term metacognition is used by contemporary developmental researchers to include not only metamemory but also comprehension, communication and problem-solving skills (Flavell, 2000). Further, the construct is delineated as procedural metamemory, which is awareness that a particular well-learned and automatized movement or complex action requires some form of preplanning prior to execution, and declarative metamemory, which is the awareness of explicit factual knowledge that requires selection and proper utilization (Schneider, 2015).
Losing and finding words and names
Patrick Rabbitt in The Aging Mind, 2019
This raises interesting questions as to how any of us, at any age, know whether or not we know something that we cannot, at the moment, precisely recall, and whether the accuracy with which we know what we know (but can’t at the moment remember) changes as we grow old. Although research on this almost metaphysical question is still rather sparse (to acknowledge its philosophical significance it is, rather pompously, termed “metamemory”), some studies find that the accuracy with which we can decide whether we know or do not know a word or fact that we cannot currently recall does not decline with age, though the confidence with which we make these judgements may be affected [6]. However, other studies do find some loss of accuracy of “feelings of knowing” in old age that are correlated with scores on behavioural tests of frontal lobe function, on which older people perform less well [7]. A particularly well-conducted study found that even demented patients who have lost much of their vocabulary do not seem to have lost the ability to decide whether a familiar word will be retrievable on a later occasion [8]. However, at least one other research group has found that metamemory is impaired in patients with “mild cognitive impairment” who may, of course, be in the early stages of dementias [9]. Studies of brain-damaged patients agree with the behavioural evidence that the frontal lobes of the brain are involved in metamemory, since patients with lesions to the right pre-frontal cortex have less accurate “feelings of knowing” [10]. Brain images from intact and conscious volunteers agree with this [7] and also show that, although the right and left inferior frontal gyri are involved in “feeling of knowing” judgements, they are not involved in direct recall of immediately remembered information [11].
Metamemory Mediates the Effects of Age on Episodic and Working Memory across the Adult Lifespan
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2022
Selene Cansino, Frine Torres-Trejo, Cinthya Estrada-Manilla, Silvia Ruiz Velasco
Metamemory in Adulthood (Dixon et al., 1988) is a scale composed of 108 questions and statements measuring knowledge, emotions and beliefs regarding our own memory. A 5-point Likert scale was used to assess the degree of agreement with various sentences or the frequency of certain behaviors. The scale measures seven dimensions: use of memory strategies, knowledge of memory tasks, knowledge of one´s own memory capacities, perception of memory change, relationship between anxiety and memory performance, achievement on memory tasks, and locus of control with respect to memory abilities. The scale was translated into Spanish, and the translated version was reviewed independently by 10 judges for the purposes of linguistic and cultural validation consisting of an assessment of the equivalence of concepts in the questionnaire and an adaptation of the concepts to Spanish culture.
Prospective Memory Predictions in Aging: Increased Overconfidence in Older Adults
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2019
Stéphanie Cauvin, Christopher J.A. Moulin, Céline Souchay, Matthias Kliegel, Katharina M. Schnitzspahn
Metamemory has received substantial attention in the retrospective memory literature (for a review see Castel, Middlebrooks, & McGillivray, 2016). However, there is not a uniform picture of metacognitive decline in healthy aging, but a complex pattern of preservation and impairment according to task, methodology and memory domain. For instance, there seems to be a deficit in evaluations of working memory (Touron, Oransky, Meier, & Hines, 2010), with older adults being less accurate at predicting their performance, but in turn benefit more from the use of effective strategies. It is also mostly found that there are deficits in predicting the status of unrecalled material in episodic memory (e.g., Souchay, Moulin, Clarys, Taconnat, & Isingrini, 2007; but see Eakin, Hertzog, & Harris, 2014), whereas there is preservation of predictive accuracy in the very same judgments but for semantic materials (e.g., Morson, Moulin, & Souchay, 2015). The form of metamemory which bears closest resemblance to our interest in PM is the judgment of learning (JOL; Nelson & Narens, 1990) procedure, which we now review in more detail.
Retrospective metamemory monitoring of semantic memory in community-dwelling older adults with subjective cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment
Published in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 2022
Susan Y. Chi, Elizabeth F. Chua, Dustin W. Kieschnick, Laura A. Rabin
The ability to monitor one’s own memory function is essential to supporting everyday functions in older adults (Hertzog & Dunlosky, 2011). Memory monitoring processes comprise one component of metamemory, which has been broadly defined as knowledge about one’s own memory (Nelson & Narens, 1990). Metamemory is a higher-order system supported by monitoring and control mechanisms that continuously interact to respectively assess the status of ongoing memory performance and to redirect behaviour to optimize memory (Chua et al., 2009b; Dunlosky & Metcalfe, 2008; Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996; Nelson & Narens, 1990; Smith et al., 2003). When monitoring processes are intact, for example, poor recall or recognition for a given target should be accompanied by a feeling of low confidence; in such cases where memory performance and confidence are congruent, metamemory monitoring is described as “accurate”. By contrast, when monitoring processes are deficient, such as when confidence is high but objective memory performance is low or when confidence is low but objective memory performance is high (e.g., reflecting an incongruent relationship between subjective and objective performance), metamemory monitoring is described as “inaccurate”. If metamemory monitoring is accurate, one may successfully redirect behaviour to dedicate more time towards memory search, switch retrieval strategies, or implement compensatory strategies to aid remembering (Castel et al., 2012; Nelson & Leonesio, 1988; Nelson & Narens, 1990). If metamemory monitoring is inaccurate, one may fail to redirect behaviour to improve memory performance (Morris & Mograbi, 2013) or potentially fail to carry out an action due to low self-efficacy, both of which can be associated with negative consequences. Experimental metamemory tasks are one way that metamemory monitoring and awareness of memory have been assessed. Given that poor awareness of memory and cognition, indexed by poorer metamemory monitoring accuracy, has been linked to poorer utilization of compensatory strategies (Schmitter-Edgecombe & Seelye, 2011) and cognitive rehabilitation outcomes (Clare et al., 2004; Clare et al., 2011), the primary purpose of the current study is to investigate differences in the accuracy of metamemory monitoring among older adults with intact cognition and with predementia conditions using an experimental metamemory task, which could have implications for the effectiveness of interventions.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Behaviorism
- Cognition
- Interference Theory
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- Memory
- Metacognition
- Recall
- Tip of The Tongue
- Bottom–Up & Top–Down Design
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