Better metacognitive awareness of trial-to-trial VSTM performance is associated with lower error, higher precision, and fewer misbinding errors, but not with item capacity, and this association is invariant across age¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · associational r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2018 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? People better able to judge variability in their performance had lower actual error (RMSE). → Daniel J. Mitchell 2018 q3 i? Better metacognitive awareness was associated with higher precision and reduced misbinding but not with Kmax, and no age-by-metacognition interaction was significant. → Daniel J. Mitchell 2018 (2)

Evidence¶

Daniel J. Mitchell 2018¶

Daniel J. Mitchell, Cam-CAN (Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience), Rhodri Cusack. (2018). Visual Short-Term Memory Through the Lifespan: Preserved Benefits of Context and Metacognition. Psychology and Aging. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000265

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Linear model predicting memory performance from metacognitive awareness (partial correlation of confidence interval width with absolute error, partialing out load and context), age, and their interaction, in the Cam-CAN sample. The association is correlational; the article notes better memory could facilitate metacognition or a third factor could drive both.

"there was a significant negative association between metacognitive awareness of absolute error, and actual error (RMSE). That is, people who were better able to judge variability in their performance also tended to perform better."

Daniel J. Mitchell 2018 (2)¶

Daniel J. Mitchell, Cam-CAN (Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience), Rhodri Cusack. (2018). Visual Short-Term Memory Through the Lifespan: Preserved Benefits of Context and Metacognition. Psychology and Aging. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000265

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Component-measure analyses from the same linear models (Table 4). In no case was there a significant age-by-metacognitive-awareness interaction; Bayes factors indicated substantial evidence favoring the null that the association is not moderated by age.

"better metacognitive awareness was significantly associated with higher memory precision, and reduced probability of making misbinding errors, but was not associated with the maximum number of items that could be held in memory."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Metacognition — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes

Related Claims¶

• Metacognitive awareness of VSTM performance becomes less accurate with age but remains well above chance across the adult life span — related
• At low memory loads, older adults report less uncertainty than younger adults despite making larger errors, suggesting an overconfidence bias — related
• VSTM performance declines with advancing adult age in raw error, item capacity, precision, and misbinding, even after adjusting for sensorimotor performance — related
• Better awareness calibration co-occurs with lower incorrect-advice acceptance and lower attribution bias, interpreted associationally only — related