Older Adults Self-Regulate Learning and Update Knowledge Regarding Psychology-Related Misconceptions

We examined how older and younger adults corrected misconceptions related to psychology when given the opportunity to engage in self-regulated learning (SRL).

In Experiment 1, young and older adults took an initial true/false test of 50 misconceptions, rated their confidence in their answer, and received immediate corrective feedback consisting of the correct answer and its explanation. In Experiment 2, immediately after receiving correct answer feedback, individuals chose whether to receive more information (i.e. the explanation of the correct answer; SRL). Individuals were retested after 1 week.

In both experiments, young and older adults held similar numbers of misconceptions when initially tested and after feedback. Though young and older adults chose to receive more information about similar numbers of statements, older adults were less likely to choose detailed information about their correct answers compared to younger adults. On the final test, older adults benefitted more than younger adults from only brief feedback, but were less likely to correct their high confidence misconceptions.

These findings suggest that older adults' regulation of knowledge learning is preserved, but how older adults' update knowledge may depend on a host of factors.