“I Think I Can Remember” age-related changes in self-efficacy for short-term memory

Introduction: Changes in metacognitive abilities due to aging, like self-efficacy, have received less attention in cognitive research. Short-term memory (STM) declines among aging adults are well known but the age-related trends of self-efficacy linked to the same have received less attention. The present research aimed at studying age-related trends in self-efficacy linked to STM among the young-aged, middle-aged, and old-aged adults. Materials and Methods: Participants performed face recall, name recall, object recall, face-name association, first-second name association, and face-object association tasks. The self-efficacy linked to these STM tasks was measured through a pre-task prediction question and a post-task judgment question. Descriptive statistics and two-way mixed model ANOVA with post hoc Bonferroni analysis were performed to assess age related changes in self-efficacy measures. Results: The findings revealed significant overestimation of performance, during pretask prediction, by old-aged adults and middle-aged adults. While the posttask judgment was recalibrated closer to the actual performance by participants of all age groups. Conclusion: The current research findings indicate that self-efficacy for STM follows an age related decline. Therefore, inclusion of self-efficacy measures in the assessment of STM would provide a valuable insight as it describes an individual's own awareness about their STM abilities, provides realistic feedback about one's STM performance and also aids clinicians in understanding the perception-performance dynamics among the aging adults.