OLDER AND YOUNGER ADULTS' STRATEGIC CONTROL OF METACOGNITIVE MONITORING: THE ROLE OF CONSEQUENCES, TASK EXPERIENCE, AND PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

The perceived importance of words in large font guides learning and selective memory

People are often presented with large amounts of information to remember, and in many cases, the font size of information may be indicative of its importance (such as headlines or warnings). In the present study, we examined how learners perceive the importance of information in different font sizes and how beliefs about font size influence selective memory. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with to-be-remembered words that were either unrelated or related to a goal (e.g., items for a camping trip) in either small or large font. Participants rated words in large font as more important to remember than words in small font when the words in a list were unrelated but not when the words were schematically related to a goal. In Experiments 2 and 3, we were interested in how learners' belief that font size is indicative of importance translates to their ability to selectively encode and recall valuable information. Specifically, we presented participants with words in various font sizes, and larger fonts either corresponded to greater point values or smaller point values (values counted towards participants' scores if recalled). When larger fonts corresponded with greater point values, participants were better able to selectively remember high-value words relative to low-value words. Thus, when to-be-remembered information varies in value, font size may be less diagnostic of an item's importance (the item's importance drives memory), and when the value of information is consistent with a learner's belief, learners can better engage in selective memory.

Responsible remembering: The role of metacognition, forgetting, attention, and retrieval in adaptive memory

In our everyday lives, we must remember important information, especially if there are consequences for forgetting. In this review, I discuss recent work on responsible remembering: the strategic and effortful prioritization of important information with consequences for forgetting. Thus far, research regarding responsible remembering has revealed several key factors and mechanisms that work together to enhance memory for important information that will continue to be refined: the identification and selection of what to remember (metacognitive reflectivity), the forgetting of less important information to facilitate memory for items that do need to be remembered (responsible forgetting), the functional prioritization of attention at the expense of competing factors (responsible attention), and the selective recall of important information via efficient retrieval strategies (responsible retrieval). Together, these functions form a cohesive system that aims to selectively prioritize, encode, and recall information that is deemed important based on its anticipated utility or the consequences of forgetting, and considering the importance of information may be a critical memory adaptation as we age. Specifically, if younger and older adults learn to self-assess and prioritize important information that has negative consequences if forgotten, engage in strategic forgetting, efficiently allocate their attentional resources, and utilize effective retrieval operations, memory for said important information can be enhanced.

The Efficacy of a Metacognitive Training Program in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment: A 6-Month Follow-Up Clinical Study

This study was conducted in response to the increasing prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia and the significant risk faced by individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment with multiple-domain deficits (aMCI-md). Given the promising effects of MTPs, the primary aim of this study was to further explore their impact by assessing the maintenance of their benefits. Thus, 45 participants were randomly allocated in two groups: the Experimental group (n = 22), which received the metacognitive training program (MTP), and the Control group (n = 23) that received the cognitive exercises program (CEP). The training programs-the MTP and the CEP-included 10 individual sessions of a one-hour duration and took place once per week. To test the efficacy of the MTP, cognitive and metacognitive outcomes were compared between two groups-Experimental (EG) and Control (CG)-at four distinct time points: before-after-3 months-6 months after intervention. Based on this study's findings, the positive effects of the MTP were evident over a six-month period. Specifically, already three months post-training, the CG began to show a decline in training-related gains. In contrast, the EG's performance consistently improved, highlighting the superior efficacy of the MTP. Gains attributed to the MTP were detected in cognitive measures: cognitive flexibility and immediate visual recall, as well as in metacognitive measures: metacognitive control, improved metacognitive beliefs of attention, and an increased use of cognitive strategies. In conclusion, the results demonstrated the sustained effects of the MTP in cognitive and metacognitive measures over a period of six months, providing novel insight into the application and efficacy of the MTP in individuals with MCI.

Memory selectivity in older age

Memory often declines with age, but older adults can off-set memory challenges by selectively remembering important information. When encountering large amounts of information and knowing that memory is limited, older adults may choose to focus on what is most important and forget less relevant details. Prioritizing what to remember becomes essential when memory is limited, and influences what information can be off-loaded. While forgetting can be frustrating and consequential, a lifetime of these experiences may help older adults learn to focus on strategically remembering important information and life events. Curiosity and emotion may also guide what older adults remember, such that selective remembering can be an adaptive way to use memory efficiently in older age.

Cognitive perspectives on maintaining physicians' medical expertise: V. Using a motivational framework to understand the benefits and costs of testing

We apply a motivational perspective to understand the implications of physicians' longitudinal assessment. We review the literature on situated expectancy-value theory, achievement goals, mindsets, anxiety, and stereotype threat in relation to testing and assessment. This review suggests several motivational benefits of testing as well as some potential challenges and costs posed by high-stakes, standardized tests. Many of the motivational benefits for testing can be understood from the equation of having the perceived benefits of the test outweigh the perceived costs of preparing for and taking the assessment. Attention to instructional framing, test purposes and values, and longitudinal assessment frameworks provide vehicles to further enhance motivational benefits and reduce potential costs of assessment.

Value-directed learning: Schematic reward structure facilitates learning

When learning, it is often necessary to identify important themes to organize key concepts into categories. In value-directed remembering tasks, words are paired with point values to communicate item importance, and participants prioritize high-value words over low-value words, demonstrating selective memory. In the present study, we paired values with words based on category membership to examine whether being selective in this task would lead to a transfer of learning of the "schematic reward structure" of the lists with task experience. Participants studied lists of words paired with numeric values corresponding to the categories the words belonged to and were asked to assign a value to novel exemplars from the studied categories on a final test. In Experiment 1, instructions about the schematic structure of the lists were manipulated between participants to either explicitly inform participants about the list categories or to offer more general instructions about item importance. The presence of a visible value cue during encoding was also manipulated between participants such that participants either studied the words paired with visible value cues or studied them alone. Results revealed a benefit of both explicit schema instructions and visible value cues for learning, and this persisted even after a short delay. In Experiment 2, participants had fewer study trials and received no instructions about the schematic structure of the lists. Results showed that participants could learn the schematic reward structure with fewer study trials, and value cues enhanced adaptation to new themes with task experience.

Cognitive perspectives on maintaining physicians' medical expertise: II. Acquiring, maintaining, and updating cognitive skills

Over the course of training, physicians develop significant knowledge and expertise. We review dual-process theory, the dominant theory in explaining medical decision making: physicians use both heuristics from accumulated experience (System 1) and logical deduction (System 2). We then discuss how the accumulation of System 1 clinical experience can have both positive effects (e.g., quick and accurate pattern recognition) and negative ones (e.g., gaps and biases in knowledge from physicians' idiosyncratic clinical experience). These idiosyncrasies, biases, and knowledge gaps indicate a need for individuals to engage in appropriate training and study to keep these cognitive skills current lest they decline over time. Indeed, we review converging evidence that physicians further out from training tend to perform worse on tests of medical knowledge and provide poorer patient care. This may reflect a variety of factors, such as specialization of a physician's practice, but is likely to stem at least in part from cognitive factors. Acquired knowledge or skills gained may not always be readily accessible to physicians for a number of reasons, including an absence of study, cognitive changes with age, and the presence of other similar knowledge or skills that compete in what is brought to mind. Lastly, we discuss the cognitive challenges of keeping up with standards of care that continuously evolve over time.

Younger and older adults' strategic use of associative memory and metacognitive control when learning foreign vocabulary words of varying importance

Older adults often face memory deficits in binding unrelated items. However, in situations such as preparing for foreign travel, a learner may be highly motivated to learn the translations of important words (e.g., "money"). In the present study, younger and older adults studied Swahili-English word pairs and judged the importance of knowing each pair if they were traveling to a foreign country. Generally, we expected older adults to display a memory deficit but for both younger and older adults' memory to be driven by the subjective importance of the to-be-learned information. Both younger and older adults' memory was related to their subjective importance ratings, suggesting that both age groups were able to engage in goal-based value-directed remembering. With increased task experience, older adults appeared to utilize a strategic approach in their study of the translations by spending more time studying the items relative to younger adults. Thus, despite associative memory deficits in older age, both younger and older adults can selectively remember subjectively important information such that older adults can effectively remember new vocabulary that is subjectively important and related to their future goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Responsible Remembering and Forgetting in Younger and Older Adults

Although older adults are often concerned about instances of forgetting, forgetting can be a useful feature of our memory system. Specifically, strategically forgetting less important information can benefit memory for goal-relevant information (i.e., responsible remembering and responsible forgetting). In two experiments, we presented younger and older adults with a list of words (either unrelated words or items to bring on a camping trip) with a cue indicating whether participants ("You") or their "Friend" was responsible for remembering each item. Results revealed that both younger and older adults engaged in responsible remembering and forgetting by better remembering items they were responsible for remembering, indicating a strategic utilization of their limited memory capacity. Additionally, regardless of age and the cue indicating who was responsible for remembering each item, participants used importance to guide the encoding and retrieval of information. Thus, people may be able to engage strategic cognitive mechanisms to maximize memory utility for important, goal-relevant information, and responsible forgetting can enhance memory utility in both younger and older adults by using importance to drive memory and reduce consequences for forgetting.

Memory and Reward-Based Learning: A Value-Directed Remembering Perspective

The ability to prioritize valuable information is critical for the efficient use of memory in daily life. When information is important, we engage more effective encoding mechanisms that can better support retrieval. Here, we describe a dual-mechanism framework of value-directed remembering in which both strategic and automatic processes lead to differential encoding of valuable information. Strategic processes rely on metacognitive awareness of effective deep encoding strategies that allow younger and healthy older adults to selectively remember important information. In contrast, some high-value information may also be encoded automatically in the absence of intention to remember, but this may be more impaired in older age. These different mechanisms are subserved by different neural substrates, with left-hemisphere semantic processing regions active during the strategic encoding of high-value items, and automatic enhancement of encoding of high-value items may be supported by activation of midbrain dopaminergic projections to the hippocampal region. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 73 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The role of attention and ageing in the retrieval dynamics of value-directed remembering

For memory to be efficient, people need to remember important information. This involves selective encoding and retrieval operations to maximise the recall of valuable information at the expense of less important information. While past research has examined this in terms of strategic encoding operations, we investigated differences in the dynamics of retrieval in value-directed remembering tasks with younger adults under full and divided attention during encoding as well as in older adults. Participants typically initiated recall with the first presented, last presented, or highest valued words and also strategically organised retrieval according to information value such that high-value words tended to be recalled before low-value words. However, the average value of older adults' first recalled word was greater than that of younger adults, likely contributing to their enhanced selectivity. In addition, there were no differences in lag-conditional-response probabilities in younger adults under full or divided attention, but older adults showed impairments in the retrieval of items sharing contextual features with nearby items, while younger adults relied more on temporal-contextual cues to recall words. Together, this study suggests that both strategic encoding and strategic retrieval operations contribute to selectivity for valuable information and older adults may be able to maximise retrieval operations despite displaying impairments in temporal binding during encoding and an overall recall deficit.

Causal Information-Seeking Strategies Change Across Childhood and Adolescence

Intervening on causal systems can illuminate their underlying structures. Past work has shown that, relative to adults, young children often make intervention decisions that appear to confirm a single hypothesis rather than those that optimally discriminate alternative hypotheses. Here, we investigated how the ability to make informative causal interventions changes across development. Ninety participants between the ages of 7 and 25 completed 40 different puzzles in which they had to intervene on various causal systems to determine their underlying structures. Each puzzle comprised a three- or four-node computer chip with hidden wires. On each trial, participants viewed two possible arrangements of the chip's hidden wires and had to select a single node to activate. After observing the outcome of their intervention, participants selected a wire configuration and rated their confidence in their selection. We characterized participant choices with a Bayesian measurement model that indexed the extent to which participants selected nodes that would best disambiguate the two possible causal structures versus those that had high causal centrality in one of the two causal hypotheses but did not necessarily discriminate between them. Our model estimates revealed that the use of a discriminatory strategy increased through early adolescence. Further, developmental improvements in intervention strategy were related to changes in the ability to accurately judge the strength of evidence that interventions revealed, as indexed by participants' confidence in their selections. Our results suggest that improvements in causal information-seeking extend into adolescence and may be driven by metacognitive sensitivity to the efficacy of previous interventions in discriminating competing ideas.

The role of metacognition and schematic support in younger and older adults' episodic memory

Older adults experience deficits in associative memory. However, age-related differences are reduced when information is consistent with prior knowledge (i.e., schematic support), suggesting that episodic and semantic memory are interrelated. It is unclear what role metacognitive processes play in schematic support. Prior knowledge may reduce encoding demands, but older adults may allocate cognitive resources to schema-consistent information because it is more meaningful. We examined metacognitive awareness of and control over associative information that was consistent or inconsistent with prior knowledge. In Experiment 1, participants self-paced their study of grocery items paired with either market prices or unusually high prices and were tested on the exact price of each item over four study-test lists with new items on each list. In Experiment 2, participants studied items for a fixed time but made judgments of learning (JOLs) at encoding. Older adults better remembered the prices of market-value items than overpriced items. In Experiment 1, younger and older adults studied overpriced items longer than market-priced items, consistent with a discrepancy reduction model of self-regulated learning, but study time did not relate to later recall accuracy, suggesting a labor-in-vain effect. In Experiment 2, participants gave higher JOLs to market-priced items than overpriced items and were generally metacognitively aware of the benefits of schematic support. Together, these results suggest that the benefits of schematic support may not be dependent on or influenced by metacognitive control processes, supporting the hypothesis that episodic memory may be less distinct from semantic memory in younger and older adults.

Responsible remembering and forgetting as contributors to memory for important information

The ability to control both what we remember and what is forgotten can enhance memory. The present study used an item-method directed forgetting paradigm to investigate whether participants strategically remembered items they were responsible for remembering rather than items a hypothetical friend was responsible for remembering. Specifically, participants were presented with a 20-word list (either unrelated words or items to pack for a camping trip) with each word followed by a cue indicating whether the participant (You) or their "friend" (Friend) was responsible for remembering the word. When asked to recall all of the words, regardless of the cue, recall was sensitive to the You and Friend instructions such that participants demonstrated elevated recall for the items they were responsible for remembering, and participants also strategically organized retrieval by recalling You items before Friend items. Additionally, when asked to judge the importance of remembering each item, participants' recall and recognition were sensitive to item importance regardless of cue. Taken together, the present experiments revealed that the strategic encoding of important information and the forgetting of less important, goal-irrelevant information can maximize memory utility and minimize negative consequences for forgetting. Thus, we provide evidence for a metacognitive process we are calling responsible forgetting, where people attempt to forget less consequential information and focus on remembering what is most important.

Investigating EEG theta and alpha oscillations as measures of value-directed strategic processing in cognitively normal younger and older adults

Value-directed strategic processing is an ability that appears to be relatively preserved with aging, but the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying strategic processing in older adults are not well understood. The current study examined age-related spectral power differences in EEG oscillations linked to processing of high-value versus low-value information in a value-directed strategic processing task in 24 younger adults (mean age: 22.4 ± 1.2 years) and 24 older adults (mean age: 63.2 ± 6.4 years). Both groups exhibited comparable strategic processing ability behaviorally with preferential recall of high- compared to low-value words. Both groups exhibited comparable theta band power with greater synchronization for low- compared to high-value words, but age-related differences in processing were noted in alpha band power. Older adults showed more prolonged alpha desynchronization for high- compared to low-value words relative to younger adults. This neurophysiological modulation in the alpha band in older adults might reflect a compensatory neural mechanism or increased effort linked to selective engagement of neural resources, allowing them to perform similarly to younger adults behaviorally on a value-directed strategic processing task.

Artificial neural networks reveal individual differences in metacognitive monitoring of memory

Previous work supports an age-specific impairment for recognition memory of pairs of words and other stimuli. The present study tested the generalization of an associative deficit across word, name, and nonword stimulus types in younger and older adults. Participants completed associative and item memory tests in one of three stimulus conditions and made metacognitive ratings of perceptions of self-efficacy, task success ("postdictions"), strategy success, task effort, difficulty, fatigue, and stamina. Surprisingly, no support was found for an age-related associative deficit on any of the stimulus types. We analyzed our data further using a multilayer perceptron artificial neural network. The network was trained to classify individuals as younger or older and its hidden unit activities were examined to identify data patterns that distinguished younger from older participants. Analysis of hidden unit activities revealed that the network was able to correctly classify by identifying three different clusters of participants, with two qualitatively different groups of older individuals. One cluster of older individuals found the tasks to be relatively easy, they believed they had performed well, and their beliefs were accurate. The other cluster of older individuals found the tasks to be difficult, believed they were performing relatively poorly, yet their beliefs did not map accurately onto their performance. Crucially, data from the associative task were more useful for neural networks to discriminate between younger and older adults than data from the item task. This work underscores the importance of considering both individual and age differences as well as metacognitive responses in the context of associative memory paradigms.

Age-related differences in metacognition for memory capacity and selectivity

Background: We compared two types of metacognitive monitoring in younger and older adults: metacognitive accuracy for their overall memory performance and their ability to selectively remember high-value information. Method: Participants studied words paired with point values and were asked to maximise their point score. In Experiment 1, they predicted how many words they would remember while in Experiment 2, they predicted how many points they would earn. Results: In Experiment 1, while younger adults were accurate in their predictions, older adults were overconfident in the number of words they would recall throughout the task. In Experiment 2, however, both younger and older adults were equally accurate when predicting the amount of points they would earn after some task experience. Conclusions: While younger adults may have higher metacognitive accuracy for their capacity, older adults can accurately assess their ability to selectively remember information, suggesting potentially separate metacognitive mechanisms that are differentially affected by aging.

Memory for Weather Information in Younger and Older Adults: Tests of Verbatim and Gist Memory

Background/Study Context: Memory for specific, verbatim details tends to decline with age, and reliance on gist-based information increases. However, instructions that direct attention toward certain types of information can benefit memory accuracy for that information. Previous work has examined gist-based and verbatim memory for images, but little work has utilized stimuli that participants may study in their daily lives, such as a weather forecast.

METHODS

The current study examined how younger and older adults recall both general, gist-based information and specific, verbatim details of a weather forecast, and whether differences in the task instructions to focus on gist-based information may affect recall. Two study-test cycles with different forecasts were used to determine whether experience with the task may affect performance.

RESULTS

While there was no effect of additional gist-based instructions on recall of gist-based information, participants who received the additional instructions recalled fewer verbatim details than those who did not. There were no age-related differences in recall of the gist of the forecast, but younger adults correctly recalled more verbatim details than older adults did.

CONCLUSION

Environmental support and use of gist-based processing can allow both younger and older adults to remember information that can be useful in their daily lives. The current study informs future research on prospective memory and memory for everyday information.

Aging and recognition memory: A meta-analysis

Recognizing a stimulus as previously encountered is a crucial everyday life skill and a critical task motivating theoretical development in models of human memory. Although there are clear age-related memory deficits in tasks requiring recall or memory for context, the existence and nature of age differences in recognition memory remain unclear. The nature of any such deficits is critical to understanding the effects of age on memory because recognition tasks allow fewer strategic backdoors to supporting memory than do tasks of recall. Consequently, recognition may provide the purest measure of age-related memory deficit of all standard memory tasks. We conducted a meta-analysis of 232 prior experiments on age differences in recognition memory. As an organizing framework, we used signal-detection theory (Green & Swets, 1966; Macmillan & Creelman, 2005) to characterize recognition memory in terms of both discrimination between studied items and unstudied lures (d') and response bias or criterion (c). Relative to young adults, older adults showed reduced discrimination accuracy and a more liberal response criterion (i.e., greater tendency to term items new). Both of these effects were influenced by multiple, differing variables, with larger age deficits when studied material must be discriminated from familiar or related material, but smaller when studying semantically rich materials. These results support a view in which neither the self-initiation of mnemonic processes nor the deployment of strategic processes is the only source of age-related memory deficits, and they add to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying those changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory for medication side effects in younger and older adults: the role of subjective and objective importance

Older adults often experience memory impairments, but sometimes they can use selective processing and schematic support to remember important information. In the present experiments, we investigated the degrees to which younger and healthy older adults remembered medication side effects that were subjectively or objectively important to remember. Participants studied a list of common side effects and rated how negative these effects would be if they were to experience them, and they were then given a free recall test. In Experiment 1, the severity of the side effects ranged from mild (e.g., itching) to severe (e.g., stroke), and in Experiment 2, certain side effects were indicated as being critical to remember (i.e., "contact your doctor if you experience this"). We observed no age differences in terms of free recall of the side effects, and older adults remembered more severe side effects than mild effects. However, older adults were less likely to recognize the critical side effects on a later recognition test, relative to younger adults. These findings suggest that older adults can selectively remember medication side effects but have difficulty identifying familiar but potentially critical side effects, and this has implications for monitoring medication use in older age.