Older adults predict more recollective experiences than younger adults

Abstract

We investigated whether older adults could successfully monitor age-related declines in recollection that are typically found on episodic memory tests. In two experiments, we elicited prospective metamemory judgments based on the remember-know procedure, called Judgments of Remembering and Knowing (JORKs). That is, participants predicted whether word pairs would be remembered (i.e., accompanied by recollective details), known (i.e., have a sense of familiarity devoid of recollective details), or forgotten, on a later test. Compared with actual test performance, older adults were highly overconfident in predicting remembering, whereas younger adults' predictions more closely corresponded with actual remembering. These data suggest that older adults have difficulties monitoring age-related declines in recollection.