Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition

PhD THESIS
This PhD aims at exploring self-assessment of one’s own performance on a memory task, often referred to as metacognitive monitoring. The field of metamemory has been greatly shaped by the semantic/episodic distinction of memory proposed by Tulving (1972). Episodic memory refers to memory for personal events related to a specific space and time while semantic memory refers to general knowledge about concepts, meaning and facts about the world.
The episodic/memory distinction can be observed on tasks used to assess metacognitive abilities. For example, some populations presenting a deficit in episodic memory processes (e.g., aging, Alzheimer’s) also show difficulties in monitoring their memory performance when the task uses episodic material but not with semantic material (Souchay et al., 2007). Moreover, as proposed by the memory constraint hypothesis (Hertzog, 2010) in the feeling-of-knowing (FOK) paradigm, poorer metacognitive accuracy could be a consequence of the first-order (i.e., memory) performance. The relationship between first-order and second-order (i.e., metacognitive) performance is a core debate in the field of metacognition. Several classical measures used to assess metacognitive sensitivity have been shown to correlate with first-order performance (see Fleming & Lau, 2014 for a review).

One goal of this PhD is to further explore the relationship between memory abilities/performance and metamemory abilities. A meta-analysis will be conducted on the FOK in aging in order to try to assess the contribution of memory performance in metamemory differences. Moreover, metacognition performance will be assessed in patients with semantic dementia, a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive loss of semantic memory, and compared to Alzheimer’s patients.
However, research has since suggested that episodic and semantic memory are also intertwined and interact with one another (see Renoult, 2019 for a review). In line with studies suggesting an interacting role of episodic and semantic memory, this PhD also aims at exploring the contribution of semantic processing in metacognitive judgments made on an episodic task.

EDUCATION

• 2019 - : PhD on Semantic Metacognition (University of Grenoble-Alpes, UGA/ LPNC)

• 2017-2019 : Master’s degree in Neuropsychology and Clinical Neuroscience (University of Grenoble-Alpes, UGA/ LPNC)
  Research project : The relationship between metamemory and interoception in autism

• 2014-2017 : Bachelor’s degree in Psychology (University of Grenoble-Alpes, UGA)
  2016-2017 : 3rd year of Bachelor’s degree in exchange (Hendrix College, USA / University of Grenoble-Alpes)