What is the relationship between collective memory and metacognition?

In this chapter we investigate whether we might learn more about the development of collective memory by examining its links with metacognition. Metacognition is the term given to the capacity that enables us to reflect on and judge our own cognitive abilities. For example, we have a global metacognitive belief in how good our memory is, as well as being able to evaluate how confident we are in completing a memory task at the local level. We use this capacity not only to judge our own cognitive ability but also to judge the cognitive ability of those with whom we interact. In fact, attention has recently been drawn to the social purpose of metacognition as the self- and other-reflective abilities it provides might be evolutionarily significant (e.g., Heyes et al., 2020). As collective memories are formed in part through social interactions with others and metacognition is likely to be necessary to facilitate these interactions, we examine the evidence for how these two processes relate. We will present evidence from the separate fields in Sections 2 and 3 of this chapter. In Section 4 we attempt to bring these separate fields together. In Section 5, we look at the case of aging, as there are changes both to memory processes and metacognition with advancing age. Finally, we sum up by suggesting priorities for future research.