Adults' Metacognitive Ability: An Examination of the Age-Deficient Hypothesis

A self-regulatory/recall task and a self-report questionnaire became operationally defined measures of metacognition, and dependent variables for an analysis designed to determine metacognitive functioning across age. Participants were 135 teachers-in-training and 21 retired teachers. All were exposed to a transfer propaganda lesson presented via the Merrill-Tennyson model. The elderly retired teachers performed less well on a concept mastery test after exposure to the lesson; also, their metacognitive ability was determined to be less effective. These results are consistent with much of the literature describing global and/or "meta" deficits among the elderly.