Memory awareness disruptions in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: comparison of multiple awareness types for verbal and visuospatial material

ABSTRACT

Successful memory is normally accompanied by explicit awareness of retrieval and confidence in the accuracy of the retrieval product. Prior findings suggest that these features of metamemory can be dissociated from retrieval accuracy in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI). However, the literature on this question contains variable and conflicting results, likely because of differences in experimental conditions. We sought to systematically evaluate memory awareness disruptions in aMCI using multiple measures and stimulus formats within the same individuals. Memory awareness was tested with global predictions and postdictions, judgments of learning, confidence level ratings, and modified feeling-of-knowing ratings in tasks of visuospatial and verbal memory. These tests were administered to 14 individuals with aMCI and 15 healthy, age-matched controls. Memory awareness accuracy was calculated as the correspondence between subjective judgments and memory performance.Individuals with aMCI demonstrated impaired global and trial-level retrospective task awareness for visuospatial and verbal stimuli. Additionally, modified feeling-of-knowing awareness was impaired selectively for verbal stimuli. Statistical effect sizes for global awareness impairments were comparable to impairments in several objective neuropsychological memory assessments.Memory awareness (metamemory) disruptions in aMCI were most evident for a subset of subjective judgment types and task input modalities. These findings advance understanding of the nature of memory impairments in aMCI and support the utility of incorporating memory awareness testing to better characterize memory integrity in older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• AMCI
• self-awareness
• monitoring
• recognition memory
• metamemory

Acknowledgments

The authors thank our participants for their time and dedication. The authors also thank Mallory Ward for her help with recruitment. A word of thanks also goes to three anonymous reviewers for their helpful contributions on an earlier manuscript

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke [grant number T32NS047987]; the Northwestern University Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center (CNADC) [grant number AG13854]; and Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center, the National Institute on Aging.