Abstract title: Subjective and objective measures on cognitive ageing
Author’s name: Paraskevi Zafeiridi
P.Zafeiridi@2013.hull.ac.uk
Word count: 238
Abstract
Human’s self-estimation of their own cognitive abilities is known as meta-cognition
(Flavell, 1979). A great amount of studies have indicated that people tend to over- or
underestimate their cognitive capacity (e.g. Glenberg & Epstein, 1985, 1987; Juslin,
1994; Koriat, 1998). The aim of the present study is to investigate whether selfevaluation of cognitive abilities changes after a test confrontation. Methods: A group
of healthy adults were instructed to complete five questionnaires for evaluating their
own working memory, semantic memory, language, abstract and real life problem
solving. After completing these questionnaires, participants performed objective
neuropsychological tests in order to evaluate their actual performance for each of the
above-mentioned cognitive domains. At the end of the testing session, subjects were
asked to complete again the self-evaluation questionnaires. Results: The findings
from the present research indicated that participants’ self-evaluation changed after
the object tests for working memory [t (14) = 2.07, P= 0.05], semantic memory [t (29) =
3.3, P= 0.002], and language [t (30) = 5.7, P= 0.000]: participants showed a decline on
self-evaluation after test confrontation. However, problems solving seems to work
differently compared to the other domains as both abstract [t (29)=0.94, P= 0.35] and
real life [t(23)= -0.3, P= 0.8] self evaluation remains stable after test confrontation. The
present results suggest that self-awareness and monitoring processes work
independently across different cognitive domains. These findings cannot be
compared to previous researches’ since there are no relevant published papers.