Postretrieval overconfidence and anosognosia in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)

General self awareness (anosognosia) and metacognitive monitoring in memory tasks are both impaired in AD, but how they relate to each other is still an open question. We examined awareness with the Anosognosia Questionnaire Dementia (AQD) and monitoring within a memory task, during retrieval with feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and post-retrieval, with judgment-of-confidence (JOC). FOKs/JOCs were performed for names of people either previously linked to self or other. AD showed both impaired FOK and JOC. They also showed lower self metamemory effect in their JOCs and lower awareness of their behavioral functioning in the AQD, which was specifically related to overconfidence in their JOCs for self-related items. Thus, anosognosia and altered postretrieval monitoring for self-related information may be related in AD.