Despite evidence of episodic memory deficits, alcoholics as a group have a tendency to overestimate their memory skills (Le Berre et al., 2016; Le Berre et al., 2010). In particular, they have difficulty in accurately predicting how well they will perform on tasks requiring recognition of newly learned information [feeling-of-knowing, FOK (Hart, 1965)]. They are also likely to generate predictions about their cognitive abilities based on semanticized (implicit) and remote memories of self-ability and poor self-reflection (autonoetic), and thus maintain an outdated and unchanged concept of self (Mograbi et al., 2009). The lack of awareness for prospective mnemonic failures suggests a mild form of anosognosia (e.g., you don’t know that you don’t know) for episodic memory dysfunction and is considered a metamemory impairment (Le Berre and Sullivan, 2016). This metamemory deficit differs from retrospective confidence in memory ability, wherein alcoholics accurately judge how well they recognized newly experienced information [i.e., Retrospective Confidence Judgment, RCJ].
