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Metamemory prediction accuracy for simple prospective and retrospective memory tasks in 5-year-old children

journal contribution
posted on 2023-07-26, 13:37 authored by Lia Kvavilashvili, Ruth M. Ford
It is well documented that young children greatly overestimate their performance on tests of retrospective memory (RM), but the current investigation is the first to examine children’s prediction accuracy for prospective memory (PM). Three studies were conducted, each testing a different group of 5-year-olds. In Study 1 (N = 46), participants were asked to predict their success in a simple event-based PM task (remembering to convey a message to a toy mole if they encountered a particular picture during a picture-naming activity). Before naming the pictures, children listened to either a reminder story or a neutral story. Results showed that children were highly accurate in their PM predictions (78% accuracy) and that the reminder story appeared to benefit PM only in children who predicted they would remember the PM response. In Study 2 (N = 80), children showed high PM prediction accuracy (69%) regardless of whether the cue was specific or general and despite typical overoptimism regarding their performance on a 10-item RM task using item-by-item prediction. Study 3 (N = 35) showed that children were prone to overestimate RM even when asked about their ability to recall a single item—the mole’s unusual name. In light of these findings, we consider possible reasons for children’s impressive PM prediction accuracy, including the potential involvement of future thinking in performance predictions and PM.

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

127

Page range

65-81

Publication title

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

ISSN

0022-0965

Publisher

Elsevier

Language

  • other

Legacy posted date

2015-08-12

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)

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