AGE-DIFFERENCES IN THE REALISM OF CONFIDENCE JUDGMENTS - A CALIBRATION STUDY USING TESTS OF FLUID AND CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE

This study investigates adult age differences in the accuracy, or real ism, of subjects' confidence judgements on the correctness of their an swers to test items. Tests of fluid intelligence, crystallized intelli gence, short-term memory and perceptual discrimination were given to 9 7 subjects between the ages of 17 and 85 years. For each test item sub jects gave their best answer, rated their confidence that the item was correct, and decided whether to submit the item for scoring. Previous ly used measures describing different aspects of subjects' confidence judgements (overconfidence, calibration, resolution and slope) were al so calculated for each subject on each of the tests. As expected, olde r people performed less well on traditional measures of fluid intellig ence and short-term memory, but better than younger subjects on measur es of crystallized intelligence. Older subjects responded more slowly to test items for all types of tasks. Regarding the confidence judgeme nt measures, older subject showed a consistent tendency towards greate r overconfidence compared to younger subjects. Older people also showe d consistently worse performance on the resolution and slope scores, w hich measure the ability of the subject's confidence judgements to dis criminate between correct and incorrect answers.