Insight into memory and functional abilities in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT

Objective

Accurate insight into one’s abilities facilitates engagement in rehabilitation and implementation of compensatory strategies. In this study, self-awareness, self-monitoring, and a new self-updating construct of insight were examined in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI).

Method

Individuals with aMCI and healthy older adults (HOAs) completed a list-learning task in a laboratory setting, and a naturalistic task of everyday functioning in a campus apartment along with other standardized neuropsychological tests. Participants made predictions about performance on the memory and functional tasks prior to task experience (self-awareness), immediately after task experience (self-monitoring), and after a delay (self-updating).

Results

Individuals with aMCI performed more poorly than HOAs on the memory task and other neuropsychological tests but not the functional task. For both the memory and functional task, performance predictions and prediction accuracy measures revealed that the aMCI group exhibited intact self-awareness, self-monitoring, and self-updating. Prediction accuracy measures showed some association with an executive composite but not a memory composite.

Discussion

Participants with aMCI demonstrated intact self-awareness, self-monitoring, and self-updating for a memory and functional task despite exhibiting poorer performance on neurocognitive tests compared to HOAs. These findings suggest that, even as memory in aMCI degrades, executive abilities may help sustain insight into difficulties, enabling adoption of cognitive strategies to support difficulties.

KEYWORDS:

• Metamemory
• self-awareness
• self-monitoring
• self-updating
• performance discrepancy paradigm

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Acknowledgments

This study was partially supported by NIBIB under Grant #R01 EB009675. No conflicts of interest exist for either of the authors. The authors would like to thank members of the Neuropsychology and Aging lab for their help both collecting and scoring the data. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe, Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4820. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering [R01 EB009675].