How is Self Awareness examined in the CMT-2
Self awareness is examined by comparing the person’s perception of their memory ability as reflected through pre-immediate recall task general questions, optional ratings of everyday memory problems, and predicted (before) and estimated (after) scores in comparison to actual recall performance. The predicted and estimated scores are the same the original CMT.
Prediction and Estimation Question: What if my client states they have “no idea” how many they will be able to remember? or just recalled?
The client should be encouraged to guess. For example, “ I know it may be difficult to estimate, but tell me your best guess”. If the person still has difficulty, you may ask more specific questions. For e.g. Would you remember 5 out of 20?; 10 out of 20? etc.
How are the predicted and estimated scores used?
The predicted score is the person’s response to question 3 before immediate recall - "If you studied 20 objects for 1 1/2 minutes, how many do you think you would be able to remember whereas the estimated score is the person’s estimation of their score after recall. The predicted or estimated score is compared to the actual immediate and delayed recall score by subtracting the number of items actually recalled from the predicted or estimated score.
Prediction or Estimated discrepancy scores are characterized by both direction and magnitude.
0 = good awareness or 100% accurate prediction or estimation, Discrepancies of 1 or 2 are typically not significant
Positive numbers indicate overestimation of abilities and negative numbers indicate underestimation of abilities
For example +5 indicates the person overestimated their actual score by 5 items, or recalled 5 items less than they had predicted or estimated, whereas -5 indicates the person underestimated their actual score by 5 items. Underestimation scores >3 can suggest decreased self-confidence in memory abilities.
Overestimation greater than +2 was not commonly observed in the healthy population in the original CMT. Most healthy controls underestimated performance by - 1-3. In general overestimation > 2 was associated with lower recall performance.