AGE-DIFFERENCES IN THE ACCURACY OF CONFIDENCE JUDGMENTS

Age differences in accuracy were investigated by having older (M = 68. 6 years) and younger (M = 21.5 years) adults make confidence judgments about the correctness of their responses to two sets of general knowl edge items. For one set, prior to making their confidence judgments, s ubjects made mental strategy judgments indicating how they had selecte d their answers (i.e., they guessed, used intuition, made an inference , or immediately recognized the response as correct). Results indicate that older subjects were more accurate than younger subjects in predi cting the correctness of their responses; however, making mental strat egy judgments did not result in increased accuracy for either age grou p. Additional analyses explored the relationship between accuracy and other individual difference variables. The results of this investigati on are consistent with recent theories of postformal cognitive develop ment that suggest older adults have greater insight into the limitatio ns of their knowledge.