Thinking About Memory: How Confident Are You in Your Memory, and Does it Change With Age?

Recruiting now

Conditions studied: Mild Cognitive Impairment, Subjective Cognitive Decline

In brief

Memory and our own beliefs and confidence in our ability to remember are important for our daily lives. For example, low confidence may hold us back from doing certain tasks, whereas misplaced high confidence in our memories may lead us to false beliefs about what has happened in the past. However, it is not fully understood how people form their beliefs about their memory abilities. These beliefs we hold about how good our memory is are form of evaluation of our own abilities known as 'metacognition'. The purpose of this study is to better understand how individuals, both with and without diagnosed memory difficulties, perform memory tasks and examine whether their metacognition of their memory performance depends on the type of memory task. That is, the study examines metacognition for different forms of memory; for example memory of our experienced life events as compared to memory for facts. There is still much more to learn about how individuals experience and think about their memories and memory abilities; and understanding this is important as some evidence suggests that good metacognition is associated with better outcomes after diagnosis of cognitive impairment. Understanding metacognitive beliefs about memory could be a route to earlier diagnosis and enable us to identify people who are likely to develop dementia.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT06539403

Run by

King's College London

People needed

72

Starts

2024-02-08

Expected to finish

2025-06-30

Last updated by the study team

2024-08-06

Who can join

Age: 65 and older, up to 120. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• In age range given above
• Referred to memory clinic
• No other current psychiatric or neurological disorders, except for migraine
• Can understand verbal or written information given in English.

You may not qualify if…

• Outside age range given above
• If they have a diagnosis of dementia and/or inability to provide informed consent.
• Diagnosis of other neurological and/ or psychiatric problems.
• Healthy participants will be excluded if they have participated in the previous study (King's REC ref: HR/DP-21/22-302230), as this study is a continuation of that.

Where it is running

• King's College London — London, United Kingdom (enrolling)

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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