Does aging influence people's metacomprehension? Effects of processing ease on judgments of text learning

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether age-related differences exist in metacomprehension by evaluating predictions based on the ease-of-processing (EOP) hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, judgments of how well a text has been learned are based on how easily each text was processe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPsychology and aging Vol. 21; no. 2; p. 390
Main Authors Dunlosky, John, Baker, Julie M C, Rawson, Katherine A, Hertzog, Christopher
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.06.2006
Subjects
Adult
Aged
Aging - psychology
Comprehension - physiology
Cues
Humans
Judgment
Learning - physiology
Mental Processes
Models, Psychological
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Summary:In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether age-related differences exist in metacomprehension by evaluating predictions based on the ease-of-processing (EOP) hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, judgments of how well a text has been learned are based on how easily each text was processed; easier processing results in higher judgments. Participants read either sentence pairs or longer texts and judged their learning of each immediately afterward. Although an age-related difference in the use of processing ease in judgments was observed with sentence pairs, for longer texts older and younger adults' judgments were similarly related to processing ease. In both experiments, age equivalence was also evident in the accuracy of the judgments at predicting performance on the criterion test. The overall pattern of results suggests that judging text learning remains largely intact with aging.
ISSN:0882-7974
DOI:10.1037/0882-7974.21.2.390