Autobiographical memory and metacognition in aging: A preserved ability to monitor memory retrieval

Older adults' retrieval of autobiographical memories is more gist-like than young adults' retrieval, meaning they tend to recall the general essence of a past experience while omitting some more specific (e.g., sensory) episodic details. This reduced specificity in autobiographical memory retrieval is attributed to a diminished ability to access episodic details, reflecting broader age-related changes in memory function. Such episodic deficits also impact memory monitoring, a key aspect of metacognition, the ability to evaluate and regulate one's own cognitive processes. While episodic memory monitoring difficulties in aging are well-documented and often attributed to declines in episodic memory, some results demonstrate the lack of that effect. Moreover, it remains unclear and underexplored whether age-related changes in episodic memory for real-world materials, such as autobiographical memory recall, translate into corresponding impairments in metacognitive monitoring. This study addresses this gap by examining metacognitive abilities related to autobiographical memory retrieval in aging. Young (N = 49, age range = 18-25) and older adults (N = 50, age range = 60-77) completed the Feeling of Retrieval task, for which they had a limited time (i.e., 2 s) to carry out feelings of fluency judgments. Specifically, they judged whether a cue would allow fluent access to their autobiographical memory or would limit it. They were then instructed to recall autobiographical memories in response to both types of cues. We found that older adults were as accurate as young adults in distinguishing the likelihood of the two types of cues to facilitate autobiographical memory retrieval, suggesting that metacognitive abilities related to autobiographical memory retrieval remain preserved in aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).