Episodic feeling-of-knowing accuracy and cued recall in the elderly: Evidence for double dissociation involving executive functioning and processing speed

This research investigated adult age differences in a metamemory monitoring task—episodic feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and in an episodic memory task—cued recall. Executive functioning and processing speed were examined as mediators of these age differences. Young and elderly adults were administered an episodic FOK task, a cued recall task, executive tests and speed tests. Age-related decline was observed on all the measures. Correlation analyses revealed a pattern of double dissociation which indicates a specific relationship between executive score and FOK accuracy, and between speed score and cued recall. When executive functioning and processing speed were evaluated concurrently on FOK and cued recall variables, hierarchical regression analyses showed that executive score was a better mediator of age-related variance in FOK, and that speed score was the better mediator of age-related variance in cued recall.