Age-Related Differences in Metamemory Accuracy among the Elderly: The Effect of Declining Inhibitory Function

Abstract

To explore the age-related difference in metamemory accuracy during older adulthood, we measured the metamemory calibration and resolution of older participants. In Study 1, we divided the participants into four groups by age: 60–64, 65–69, 70–74, and above 75 years. We used young adults as a contrast group. The results revealed the inconsistency of age-related differences in calibration and resolution. The young adults had higher calibration in global prediction than the four groups of older adults before the study, whereas there were no differences among the four elderly groups. There were no differences in resolution between the 60- to 64-year, 65- to 69-year and young adult groups, but these three groups had higher resolution than the 70- to 74-year and above 75-year groups for item-by-item prediction. In Study 2, we measured the older participants’ inhibitory function to explore whether impaired inhibitory function led to a decline in metacognitive ability in the elderly. The results showed that the inhibition function was highly correlated with the accuracy of judgments of learning (JOL) and can predict the accuracy of JOL to a certain extent.