A preliminary psychometric evaluation of the activity ordering task with a metacognitive facet (AOT-M).
Nidhi Lalu Jacob, Aysha Rooha, Anjaly S Nair and 3 others
PMID 40052965WHAT IT FOUND
A new task asking adults to order daily activities measured working memory well in younger and middle-aged groups but showed a performance plateau in older adults.
It predicts self-awareness of memory errors better than it measures raw memory capacity, so use it as a screening aid, not a definitive score.
Key findings
01Performance spans dropped significantly with age, with young adults scoring a median of 4.00 compared to 3.00 for middle-aged and older adults.
02The task showed poor ability to distinguish between individuals' memory capacities (person reliability 0.606), largely because most participants could not advance beyond the initial difficulty levels.
03Participants' predictions of their own memory span correlated strongly with their actual performance on established word-ordering tasks, suggesting the metacognitive component works better than the raw memory measure.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used a small, convenience sample of 90 neurotypical adults from a single socioeconomic background (middle class) and language proficiency level, limiting generalizability to clinical populations or diverse cultural groups. A 'performance plateau' occurred where most participants could not advance beyond the initial difficulty levels, resulting in inadequate person reliability (0.606) and reducing the task's ability to differentiate between individuals with varying memory capacities. The metacognitive component showed inconsistent validity: while predictions correlated with standard tasks, post-task estimates (postdictions) did not correlate with the Digit Letter Ordering task, and older adults' postdictions did not correlate with the Sentence Ordering task. Gender distribution was uneven across age groups, and the study was not designed to detect gender effects, so no conclusions about sex differences in performance can be drawn.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under the Cognitive Science Research Initiative, Government of India. No other conflicts of interest were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the excellent test-retest reliability (ICC 0.966) as evidence that the task accurately measures memory capacity differences. The low person reliability (0.606) indicates the task failed to distinguish between participants' true abilities because most hit a ceiling at the early levels.