Don’t Look at My Answer

Abstract

Preschoolers’ ability to introspect and make decisions on the basis of these introspections has traditionally been questioned. The present research introduces a novel paradigm to examine the development of the connection between subjective uncertainty about memory and decision making in preschoolers. Three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds ( N = 81) encoded items presented once or twice. They then completed a forced-choice test, provided confidence judgments for each response, and decided whether to select or exclude answers to be evaluated for the possibility of reward. Four- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, reported lower certainty for incorrect and weaker memories than for correct and stronger memories, and they judiciously excluded their least confident memories, which resulted in accuracy gains for selected memories; these findings highlight age-related improvements in introspection on memory accuracy. Among accurate responses only, even 3-year-olds excluded their least confident answers, which suggests that the connection between uncertainty and decision making precedes the ability to monitor memory accuracy.