title: Don't look at my answer: subjective uncertainty underlies preschoolers' exclusion of their least accurate memories.
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.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Davis emily.hembacher@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hembacher
authors.affiliation: University of California, Davis.
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ghetti
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D035501:Uncertainty
keywords: confidence; control; memory; monitoring; open data; preschoolers; uncertainty