A life-span development approach to explore characteristics of older adults' beliefs of cognitive self-efficacy and monitoring abilities on their cognitive performance

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24530920
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Meiji Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: KINJO Hikari 明治学院大学, 心理学部, 教授 (00327298)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SHIMIZU Hiroyuki 神戸学院大学, 人文学部, 教授 (30202112)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: メタ認知 / 加齢 / 記憶 / 信念 / 自己効力感

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Metacognition is defined as thoughts, beliefs, and other cognitive processes devoted to monitoring and controlling one’s own cognition. It has become an important topic on aging literature. The current project focused on two key components of metacognition: beliefs of self-efficacy and monitoring on cognitive activities. The literature has not fully explored characteristics of beliefs about self-efficacy of various cognitive activities, the effect of the beliefs on broader cognitive functions, and whether and how much older adults can monitor their own various cognitive activities. Thus, this project aimed to clarify characteristics of older adults’ beliefs of cognitive self-efficacy and monitoring ability on their cognitive performance with a life-span sample using 265 Japanese adults, ages 20 to 88. Although we are still analyzing the data and writing papers, we have published 5 peer-reviewed articles, 6 presentations at conferences, 2 book chapters, and 2 articles in handbooks.

Free Research Field

認知心理学