How local and global metacognition shape emotion recognition across the adult lifespan

Aging is associated with modifications in social cognition which is essential for successful interpersonal relationships. Older adults often show reduced emotion recognition, particularly for negative emotions. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain these difficulties. However, the role of metacognition, the ability to monitor and evaluate one's own cognitive performance, remains poorly understood. While metacognition has been extensively studied in memory and perception, it has rarely been investigated in the context of emotion recognition, particularly in aging. The present study aimed at investigating: (1) how emotion recognition accuracy changes with age; (2) whether prospective and retrospective metacognitive judgments are affected by aging; and (3) whether metacognitive judgments predict emotion recognition abilities. Data were collected from 92 participants (42 younger adults and 50 older adults), who completed a facial emotion recognition task with metacognitive judgments. Older adults showed reduced emotion recognition, particularly for negative emotions, whereas metacognitive abilities were preserved. Global retrospective judgments strongly predicted performance in older adults, whereas no such association was observed in younger adults. By combining multi-level metacognitive measures, this study provides novel insights into mechanisms supporting sociocognitive functioning across adulthood.