Does age affect metacognition? A cross-domain investigation using a hierarchical Bayesian framework

According to previous research, the accuracy of metacognitive judgments in aging depends on the cognitive domain involved in the task, the experimental design, and the metacognitive index used. Older adults are frequently less accurate than younger adults in judging their episodic memory, while no difference is typically observed for semantic metamemory. In addition, age-related changes in metaperception appear to be highly task-dependent. Other metacognitive domains (such as metacognition of executive functioning) have been seldom explored. This study aimed to integrate methodological and theoretical advances in the study of metacognition to answer the question of whether metacognition is impaired in healthy aging. Data were collected in a large sample (n = 443) of participants aged 18 to 79. Participants provided retrospective confidence judgments in four domains: episodic memory, semantic memory, executive functioning, and visual perception. Our measure of accuracy, metacognitive efficiency, was estimated using a hierarchical Bayesian implementation of the meta-d’ model. Results showed that metacognitive efficiency decreased with age in the episodic task and increased with age in the semantic task. There was no effect of age on metacognitive efficiency in the executive and perception tasks. Moreover, metacognitive efficiency appeared to rely on a domain-general process in older adults. Explaining the episodic metamemory deficit in aging could help understand the difficulties of older adults to use inferential processes for memory search and retrieval as well as their difficulties to implement memory strategies.