Measuring Global Metacognition: Effect Of Cognitive Task Exposure On Younger And Older Adults’ Self-Concepts - Info and Reading Options

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Findings from a recent, unpublished online study designed in our lab (Arar et al., in prep, also preregistered on OSF) suggests that exposure to cognitive tasks impacts older adults’ global metacognitive beliefs such that they become more accurate in their assessments. We designed the current study to address limitations in the prior study and replicate its key findings. The below information—which has been amended from our previous study’s preregistration—provides background and further describes the motivation for our current study. Background Metacognition, or knowledge of one’s cognitive abilities, has been the subject of intense scientific inquiry in the cognitive aging literature. A key finding is that accurate self-assessments of one’s own cognitive ability (i.e., metacognitive accuracy) is a critical component of optimal self-regulation. Much of this literature has focused on task-based metacognitive judgments (e.g., judging whether or not an item will be recalled on a memory test) and the extent that older adults are able to make these judgments compared to younger adults (for reviews, see Castel, Middlebrooks, & McGillivray, 2016; Hertzog & Dunlosky, 2011; Hertzog & Hultsch, 2000), which has led to a wealth of literature on identifying appropriate methods for measuring task-based or local metacognitive accuracy (for review, see Fleming & Lau, 2014) and the factors (e.g., prior task exposure; see Rhodes, 2019) that impact said accuracy. However, in comparison to research on such task-based or local metacognitive judgments, one aspect of metacognition that has been relatively overlooked in the aging literature is people’s global metacognitive beliefs, or holistic assessments of one’s cognitive abilities (e.g., “In general, I believe my memory ability is poor.”). Compared to task-based or local metacognition, much less is known about how to measure global metacognitive accuracy or the factors that might impact these measurements. To date, most of the cognitive aging literature aimed at measuring global metacognitive accuracy has been in the context of clinical assessment of cognitive decline, as in the case of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, a typical procedure to measure global metacognitive insight or accuracy is to administer questionnaires to participants to have them rate their own cognitive abilities (or severity of cognitive problems), and then to compare these ratings to those of an informant (usually a significant other or clinician), in order to identify the extent of the discrepancy (e.g., Clare, 2004; Leicht, Berwig, & Gertz, 2010; Starkstein et al., 2006). While this technique has produced several important findings, a major limitation is that this technique lacks an objectively anchored assessment of cognitive ability from which to compute global metacognitive accuracy. It is important to better understand global metacognition because global metacognition may exert a similar (if not greater) influence on everyday behaviors as local metacognition. Rouault and Fleming (2020) posit that we often draw upon our overall sense of confidence in our abilities when making everyday decisions, rather than solely relying on local confidence estimates. Thus, enhancing the accuracy of our global metacognitive beliefs may be an antecedent to improving everyday behaviors (e.g., compliance with medical advice and adhering to medication regimens; see Hargis & Castel, 2018). Additionally, examining dissociations between more global confidence estimates and objective abilities may prove valuable for clinical/diagnostic purposes as evidenced by previous work on self-efficacy (e.g., David et al., 2012; Rouault et al., 2018; Hoven et al., 2019) and mnemonic anosognosia (e.g., Clare, 2004), which has suggested that distorted global metacognitive beliefs may be an indicator of neurological/psychiatric disorders. This paucity of empirical investigation on global metacognition motivates the present research: We will determine the extent to which exposure to a battery of cognitive tasks influences older and younger adults’ self-reported global metacognitive beliefs. We will also explore the objectively measured accuracy of those global metacognitive beliefs. Results from the present study have the potential to help identify individuals who may have global metacognitive deficits and also inform novel interventions that might improve global metacognitive accuracy. Improving global metacognitive accuracy may be especially beneficial for older adults, who may need to possess accurate insight into their cognitive abilities in order to seek help for age-related cognitive decline.

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