Meunier-Duperray et al. (2025)

On the complexity of metacognitive judgments of memory: evidence from retrospective confidence, feeling of knowing, and older adults

Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2025(1)

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Abstract

Abstract Dissociations in types of memory tasks emerge when comparing feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments, predictions of upcoming performance, and retrospective confidence. This pattern has been used to construct theories of metacognitive access to memory, particularly in memory-impaired groups. In particular, older adults’ metacognitive sensitivity appears to vary between episodic (impaired) and semantic (intact) memory. However, this could be explained by the limitations of metacognitive measures and/or memory differences. We aimed to test these dissociations of metacognition with aging by comparing metacognitive efficiency in episodic and semantic tasks using two types of judgment: retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs) and FOK judgments. Metacognitive efficiency was estimated in 240 participants aged 19–79 years using a hierarchical Bayesian framework. Results showed that metacognitive efficiency for RCJs declined with age in the semantic task, even though task performance increased with age, while metacognitive efficiency was stable in the episodic task. Surprisingly, metacognitive efficiency was very low (although significantly higher than zero) for both FOK tasks regardless of age compared to similar previous studies. We suggested this might be due to the online testing. These results point to metacognition being multifaceted and varying according to judgment, domains, and populations.

Reference

Meunier-Duperray, L., Mazancieux, A., Souchay, C., Bastin, C., Angel, L., & Moulin, C. J. A. (2025). On the complexity of metacognitive judgments of memory: evidence from retrospective confidence, feeling of knowing, and older adults. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2025(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf003

What Rests on This

1 mechanism cites this source. Each finding below is quoted as it appears on that mechanism's own page.

Feeling of Knowing Metacognition

Definition

FOK is a prediction of upcoming memory performance, which separates it from retrospective confidence about an answer already given; the two dissociate across memory tasks and in memory-impaired groups
Measured in humans

Accuracy depends heavily on procedure: in 240 mostly online adults, FOK efficiency (meta-d'/d') was 0.06 to 0.07, against 0.55 to 0.65 in the same group's lab study of 92 students, apparently because participants rated whether they had recalled rather than predicting recognition
Measured in AI

That task is a different measure: it predicts the model's own recall from the question alone, with no failed-recall step and no recognition test, so it resembles the rapid initial FOK or a prospective confidence rating, and its score mainly reflects telling answerable from unanswerable questions, which is exactly what FOK for unrecalled items leaves out; people who rate recall instead of predicting recognition score very differently, so the two cannot stand in for each other