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Abstract:
In two experiments we assessed older subject's (> 65 years
old) "feelings of knowing" in order to examine how retrieval ease
affected their "feelings of knowing" (FOKs). To examine retrieval
ease, we tested older subjects on the Ranschburg effect -- a
supramemory task in which repeated items are retrieved (recalled)
less well than nonrepeated items. We found that older subjects'
recall performance for repeated items was worse than for
nonrepeated items, similar to younger subjects (college students).
Younger subject's FOKs were lower for repeated items than for
nonrepeated items, indicating that their FOKs were responding to
the retrieval interference (output interference) inherent in the
Ranschburg Effect (i.e., younger people were not as confident that
they could correctly retrieve repeated as they could nonrepeated
items). Would older people's FOKs also be lower for repeated than
for nonrepeated items? Nine older subjects were studied. Our
results indicated that older subjects' FOKs were not affected by
repetition. Older people's FOKs for repeated and nonrepeated items
were the same -- 54 (subjects' judgment on a scale of 1-100) for
both. The data suggest that older people's FOKs may be less
influenced by retrieval ease (output interference) than younger
people's FOK's. Potential neural bases are discussed.
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