Metamemory for pictures of naturalistic scenes: Assessment of accuracy and cue utilization

Memory for naturalistic pictures is exceptionally good. However, little is known about people’s ability to monitor the memorability of naturalistic pictures. We report the first systematic investigation into the accuracy and basis of metamemory in this domain. People studied pictures of naturalistic scenes, predicted their chances of recognizing each picture at a later test (judgment of learning, JOL), and completed a recognition memory test. Across three experiments, JOLs revealed substantial accuracy. This was due to people basing their JOLs on multiple cues, most of which predicted recognition memory. Identified cues include intrinsic picture attributes (e.g., peacefulness of scenes; scenes with or without persons) and extrinsic aspects of the study situation (e.g., presentation frequency; semantic distinctiveness of scenes with respect to the context). This work provides a better understanding of metamemory for pictures and it demonstrates close parallels between metamemory for naturalistic scenes and verbal materials.

Metacognitive preserved generation strategy benefits for both younger and elderly participants with schizophrenia

Cognitive memory and introspection disturbances are considered core features of schizophrenia. Moreover, it remains unclear whether or not participants with schizophrenia are more cognitively impaired with ageing than healthy participants. The aims of this study were to use a metacognitive approach to determine whether elderly participants with schizophrenia are able to improve their memory performance using a specific generation strategy and to evaluate the memory benefits for them using this strategy. 20 younger and 20 older participants with schizophrenia and their comparison participants matched for age, gender and education learned paired associates words with either reading or generation, rated judgment of learning (JOL) and performed cued recall. Participants with schizophrenia recalled fewer words than healthy comparison participants, but they benefited more from generation, and this difference was stable with ageing. Their JOL magnitude was lower than that of healthy comparison participants, but JOL accuracy was not affected by either age or the pathology. In spite of their memory deficit, elderly and younger participants with schizophrenia benefited remarkably from the memory generation strategy. This result gives some cause for optimism as to the possibility for participants with schizophrenia to reduce memory impairment if learning conditions lead them to encode deeply.