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Correlates and Predictors of Metamemory in an Online Sample
Jennifer K Hoots1,2, Lawrence Chan3, Nathan E Cook4,5
1Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, VA Providence Healthcare System, Providence, RI.
Objective:
Metamemory is a key component of various neuropsychiatric conditions, including functional cognitive disorder, and is associated with quality of life across such conditions. Improved characterization of correlates and predictors of metamemory in the general population may help inform clinical care. The authors examined psychometric properties of the Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire (MMQ), as well as relationships of metamemory with well-being and health-related factors.
Methods:
In total, 438 U.S. adults (mean±SD age=32.0±7.0 years) completed an online survey on Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. Psychometric properties of three MMQ scales were assessed, and hierarchical regressions were used to examine how metamemory relates to well-being and health-related factors (i.e., emotional distress, sleep disturbance, and pain interference).
Results:
All three MMQ scales showed adequate internal consistency and convergent validity. Only MMQ-ability showed good discriminant validity. Inclusion of MMQ scale scores improved models predicting well-being, beyond demographic characteristics alone (meaning and purpose, R2=0.31; ability to participate, R2=0.22; both p<0.001). Inclusion of health-related factors, particularly emotional distress and sleep disturbance, improved models predicting MMQ-satisfaction, MMQ-ability, and MMQ-strategy scores, beyond demographic characteristics alone (R2=0.40, R2=0.30, and R2=0.14, respectively; all p<0.001).
Conclusions:
The MMQ is a psychometrically robust measure of metamemory, with scientific and clinical utility in neuropsychiatry. Metamemory was found to be related to well-being in a heterogeneous adult sample from the general population. Health-related variables, particularly emotional distress and sleep disturbance, are associated with memory satisfaction, perceived memory, and strategy use. These findings emphasize the importance of assessing metamemory and incorporating health-related variables into conceptualization and treatment of metamemory in neuropsychiatric conditions.
