How older adults balance emotional and cognitive goals through monitoring and control using the MAMC framework

Research suggests that aging accompanies an adaptive shift in strategic regulation of both emotion and learning. Strategic regulation plays a critical role in metacognition, or our ability to control, monitor, and modulate cognitive processes. Older adults prioritize emotional wellbeing and engage in regulating cognitive engagement based on internal motivation states as well as external environmental goals. There has been a large body of research focused on age-related shifts in regulation of cognitive and emotional processes to manage wellbeing and a large body of research examining how age-related metacognitive changes impact cognitive output. This review seeks to bridge these two domains of research and suggests that age-related cognitive changes may be better understood by considering the exchange between meta-affect (monitoring and control of emotions associated with cognitive processes) and metacognitive processes. This review also examines the socio-emotional factors that impact metacognition and specifically strategic regulation of cognitive resources associated with task engagement in older adults. In this paper, we propose that adaptive strategic regulation in older adults is the product of the integration of metacognitive and meta-affective processes. We propose that metacognition and meta-affect are intertwined, as internal emotional and cognitive goals influence the initial and ongoing understanding and evaluation of any cognitive task.