Claims

At low memory loads, older adults report less uncertainty than younger adults despite making larger errors, suggesting an overconfidence bias

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q3 i? Reported uncertainty declined with age at loads 1 and 2 (load 1: r = -0.14, p < .001; load 2: r = -0.13, p < .01) but not at loads 3 through 4. → Daniel J. Mitchell 2018

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

Correlation of mean confidence-interval width with age per memory load in the Cam-CAN sample. The article interprets this as older adults being more confident of their judgments than younger adults at low loads despite making larger errors, a metacognitive bias consistent with reported age-related increases in overconfidence.

"Reported uncertainty declined slightly with age, but only at low memory loads (load 1: r = −0.14, p < .001; load 2: r = −0.13, p < .01; loads 3 through 4: p > .1)."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id older-adults-overconfident-low-load-vstm
title At low memory loads, older adults report less uncertainty than younger adults despite making larger errors, suggesting an overconfidence bias
description At low memory loads, older adults report less uncertainty than younger adults despite making larger errors, suggesting an overconfidence bias
status review
evidence_strength moderate
newest_evidence 2018
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-17
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — daniel-j-mitchell-2018

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