The Relationship Between Executive Functions, Self-Reflection, and Insight Across Adulthood

Research suggests that executive functions and metacognitive abilities, including self-reflection and insight, may share underlying mechanisms since both rely on top-down cognitive processes and require self-regulation. However, these relationships have not been thoroughly examined by empirical research. The current study investigated the relationship between insight, self-reflection, and executive functions cross-sectionally across different stages of aging.

Participants were 1284 (655 men and 629 women) cognitively healthy community dwellers with an age range of 18-89 years (M = 47.91, SD = 19.83). The sample was divided into three groups based on age, e.g., the young adults (18-34 years-old), the middle-aged adults (35-59 years-old), and older adults (60 years and older). Participants completed multiple executive function tasks (including trail making, verbal fluency, Stroop, digit span) and a self-report insight and self-reflection measure individually in face-to-face sessions.

The results show that education, age, digit span forward, which is a measure of short-term memory and phonemic fluency were significant predictors of self-reported insight. Furthermore, insight, but not self-reflection, had significant positive correlations with short-term memory and phonemic fluency across three age groups.

Overall, the results indicate that performance on executive function measures and self-reported self-reflection and insight are relatively independent cognitive abilities.