Metacognition
Does our self-awareness change as we grow older?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
As people age, their overall confidence in their performance decreases, but their actual ability to evaluate individual decisions remains just as accurate.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Six age brackets completing adaptive memory and visual discrimination tasks with confidence ratings
- N
- N=304 · ~50 per age group from 18–27 through 68+
- Population
- Adults spanning young to older adulthood
- Outcome
- Local metacognitive efficiency vs global metacognitive bias by age
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Key findings
The study showed that local metacognitive efficiency—how accurately confidence ratings tracked correct and incorrect answers on a trial-by-trial basis—did not decrease with age. However, overall metacognitive bias decreased, meaning that older adults reported lower average confidence during the tasks and gave lower global self-estimates of their performance both before and after the tasks. Additionally, individual metacognitive efficiency scores were positively correlated across the memory and perceptual tasks, with an overall cross-task correlation of 0.60.
Methodology
Researchers evaluated 304 participants grouped into 6 age brackets spanning from young adults to older adults. To test self-awareness, participants completed short-term memory and visual discrimination tasks on a computer, indicating their confidence after each trial on a 201-point scale. The task difficulty was dynamically updated using an adaptive staircase to keep overall performance accuracy stable across age groups.
Limitations
The cross-sectional design cannot track how individual self-awareness changes over time, meaning differences between age groups might stem from generational or cultural factors rather than aging itself. Additionally, the online platform used to recruit participants may have biased the sample toward technology-literate, high-functioning older adults, potentially obscuring a real-world decline in cognitive self-evaluation. Finally, the study used simplified laboratory tasks with performance-matching, which might not reflect how older adults evaluate their cognitive abilities in complex daily-life scenarios.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Metacognitive self-evaluation is partially domain-general, meaning an individual's ability to monitor their performance correlates across visual perception and memory tasks.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
With age, an individual's global confidence bias (overall confidence) decreases, but their local metacognitive efficiency (trial-by-trial accuracy tracking) remains unimpaired.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Studies disagree on the strength of the relationship between visual perception and memory metacognition: one study observed a robust cross-task correlation of 0.60, whereas another found no significant correlation specifically between episodic memory and visual perception.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Metacognitive abilities appear to be largely domain-general, as an individual's self-evaluation accuracy and confidence ratings are significantly correlated across different types of mental tasks.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
There is disagreement regarding whether aging causes a decline in trial-by-trial metacognitive efficiency; one study found a significant age-related decline in visual self-awareness, while another study using performance-matched adaptive tasks found that local metacognitive efficiency remained completely intact across age groups.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Metacognitive efficiency exhibits domain-general properties, meaning that an individual's ability to evaluate their own decisions is significantly correlated across different mental tasks such as memory and perception.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Memory-based metacognitive efficiency appears to remain relatively stable and does not show a statistically significant decline across the adult lifespan.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Studies disagree on whether visual metacognitive efficiency declines with age: one study found a significant age-related decline in judging visual decisions, while another found that trial-by-trial local metacognitive efficiency remains intact across age groups.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Open questions
Tensions this paper is part of
From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.
Studies disagree on the strength of the relationship between visual perception and memory metacognition: one study observed a robust cross-task correlation of 0.60, whereas another found no significant correlation specifically between episodic memory and visual perception.
There is disagreement regarding whether aging causes a decline in trial-by-trial metacognitive efficiency; one study found a significant age-related decline in visual self-awareness, while another study using performance-matched adaptive tasks found that local metacognitive efficiency remained completely intact across age groups.
Studies disagree on whether visual metacognitive efficiency declines with age: one study found a significant age-related decline in judging visual decisions, while another found that trial-by-trial local metacognitive efficiency remains intact across age groups.
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