Being able to assess our own memories helps us to avoid errors and prompts us to collect more information to fill the gaps. Psychologists know that this ability is present in elementary school-age children. Now a new study shows how this “metamemory” improves from childhood through adolescence, with accompanying changes in brain structure. The work is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We did not know that this capacity continues to improve into adolescence, and virtually all previous evidence came from cross-sectional studies comparing children at different ages instead of testing the same children over time,” said co-author Simona Ghetti, professor of psychology at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis.