Thinking About Memory: How Confident Are You in Your Memory, and Does it Change With Age?

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Our confidence in our memory ability is important for our wellbeing, especially in older age as many of us begin to fear developing dementia. The ability to judge our own cognitive abilities, such as our memory, is called metacognition. The confidence we have in our memory can be affected by changes in these metacognitive skills. Many older individuals are referred to memory clinics because they believe that their memory ability has decreased. Some individuals with these memory complaints, but without dementia, demonstrate signs of impairment to their thinking processes when tested by clinicians and are given the diagnosis Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Others show no impairment when tested and are given the diagnosis Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD). A sparse amount of research has investigated the metacognitive abilities of these groups of individuals; both those with MCI and those with SCD. Investigation of these abilities is important as some work suggests that good metacognition is associated with better symptom outcomes (Chi et al., 2022; Zhuang et al., 2022). Understanding the mechanisms underlying metacognitive beliefs about memory could be a route to earlier diagnosis and enable us to identify people who are likely to develop dementia. In this study we will recruit individuals with both MCI or SCD and age-matched controls, who do not feel that they have memory impairments, in order to investigate their metacognitive beliefs about their memory abilities. Primary Objective: The primary objective of the study is to measure whether metacognitive judgements of memory performance differ between older healthy individuals and patients who have been referred to memory clinics. The study will include patients diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and those with Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) to examine how they judge their ability to remember, compared to healthy older individuals. To achieve this objective, the following will be assessed: How do people rate their own memory in daily life and does this vary across different memory domains? (this is known as self-belief) How do people rate their ability to complete the tasks we ask them to take part in? (known as global metacognition) How confident are people in their memory when they take part in a memory task? (known as local metacognition) Are there differences in 1), 2) and 3) between individuals with and without memory complaints? The 'global' and 'local' metacognition examined in 2) and 3) will be compared across different types of cognitive task. The cognitive tasks assess semantic and episodic memory and visual perception. This will allow examination of the following: Are there differences in global (how confident they think about completing the task overall) and local metacognition (hoe confident they are for each response they give) between the different tasks, e.g., between semantic memory and episodic memory? What is the relationship between self-beliefs, global and local metacognition? Examined through a self-belief questionnaire at the start and the self-rated confidence values given throughout the tasks. Are there differences in 5) and 6) between individuals with and without memory complaints? Secondary objective: Are there differences in cognitive performance between those with and without memory complaints? This is assessed through the scores people achieve on the tasks used - rather than on the confidence ratings people give while completing the tasks. Are there differences in cognitive performance between the three types of task? Performance will be examined for each individual task separately (e.g., spatial information and object information maintenance - both of which are art of the episodic memory battery. Does dementia worry moderate the metacognitive processes of the individuals? This will be assessed by examining responses given in the Dementia Worry questionnaire and comparing their level of dementia worry (high, medium, low) to the confidence ratings they give throughout.