Exploring Age-Related Metamemory Differences using Modified Brier Scores and Hierarchical Clustering
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
Abstract
Older adults (OAs) typically experience memory failures as they age. However, with some exceptions, studies of OAs’ ability to assess their own memory functions—Metamemory (MM)— find little evidence that this function is susceptible to age-related decline. Our study examines OAs’ and young adults’ (YAs) MM performance and strategy use. Groups of YAs (N = 138) and OAs (N = 79) performed a MM task that required participants to place bets on how likely they were to remember words in a list. Our analytical approach includes hierarchical clustering, and we introduce a new measure of MM—the modified Brier—in order to adjust for differences in scale usage between participants. Our data indicate that OAs and YAs differ in the strategies they use to assess their memory and in how well their MM matches with memory performance. However, there was no evidence that the chosen strategies were associated with differences in MM match, indicating that there are multiple strategies that might be effective (i.e. lead to similar match) in this MM task.
Recommended Citation
Parlett-Pelleriti C, Lin GC, Jones MR, Linstead E, Jaeggi SM. Exploring Age-Related Metamemory Differences using Modified Brier Scores and Hierarchical Clustering. Open Psychol. 2019;1(1):215-238. https://doi.org/10.1515/psych-2018-0015
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
This article was originally published in Open Psychology, volume 1, issue 1, in 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/psych-2018-0015