In this study, the authors examined the effects of aging on autobiographical memory in 180 participants by means of a new method designed to assess across 5 lifetime periods the nature of memories-that is, specificity and spontaneity--and the phenomenal experience of remembering--that is, self-perspective and autonoetic consciousness--via the field/observer and remember/know paradigms respectively. Age-related differences were found for the specificity and spontaneity of memories and the phenomenal experience of remembering. There was an increase in observer and know responses with age, but a decrease in field and remember responses and in the ability to justify them by recalling sensory-perceptive, affective, or spatiotemporal specific details. This pattern confirms the existence of a semantic-episodic dissociation in autobiographical memory in aging. Moreover, the data support the view that older participants can subjectively "travel back in time" to relive personal events in the most distant past better than those in the recent past.

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The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of advanced age on self-reported internal and external memory strategy uses, and whether this effect can be predicted by executive functioning. A sample of 194 participants aged 21 to 80 divided into three age groups (21-40, 41-60, 61-80) completed the two strategy scales of the Metamemory in Adulthood (MIA) questionnaire, differentiating between internal and external everyday memory strategy uses, and three tests of executive functioning. The results showed that: (1) the use of external memory strategies increased with age, whereas use of internal memory strategy decreased; (2) executive functioning appeared to be related only to internal strategies, the participants who reported the greatest use of internal strategies having the highest executive level; and (3) executive functioning accounted for a sizeable proportion of the age-related variance in internal strategy use. These findings suggest that older adults preferentially use external memory strategies to cope with everyday memory impairment due to aging. They also support the view that the age-related decrease in the implementation of internal memory strategies can be explained by the executive hypothesis of cognitive aging. This result parallels those observed using objective laboratory memory strategy measures and then supports the validity of self-reported memory strategy questionnaire.

The purposes of this study were to determine the impact of physical activity on three different executive functions (shifting, inhibition, and updating) and to examine whether cardiovascular fitness was a good mediator of the positive link(s) between these variables. Sixty-three young adults (18-28 years), 30 young-old adults (60-70 years) and 30 old adults (71-81 years) were divided into physically active and sedentary groups according to physical activity level (assessed from an accelerometer and the Historical Leisure Activity Questionnaire). Cardiovascular fitness was assessed by VO2max from the Rockport 1 mile. Each executive function was assessed through three different experimental tasks. ANCOVAs revealed that the effect of physical activity level was specific to the old adults and significant for inhibition, but not for updating and shifting. Mediation analysis showed that this positive effect in the old adults group was mediated by cardiovascular fitness level. The present findings highlight the positive linkages among physical activity, cardiovascular fitness, and inhibition in aging.

Feeling-of-knowing (FOK) accuracy and judgment-of-learning (JOL) accuracy were compared on separate, identical, episodic-memory tasks. The results indicated that these two measures were not correlated, suggesting that they do not tap the same metacognitive ability. We also looked at whether FOK and JOL accuracies were related differently to higher order executive functioning. In order to take advantage of within-subject variability in cognitive performance, older adults were selected as participants. They were administered the standard neuropsychological tests used to assess executive functioning. A correlational analysis clearly showed that only FOK accuracy was correlated with the executive measures, suggesting that executive control is not equally implicated in FOK and JOL.

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In human cognition, self and memory processes strongly interact, as evidenced by the memory advantage for self-referential materials (Self Reference Effect (SRE) and Self Reference Recollection Effect (SRRE)). The current study examined this interaction at the behavioural level and its neural correlates in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Healthy older controls (HC) and AD patients performed trait-adjectives judgements either for selfrelevance or for other-relevance (encoding phase). In a first experiment, the encoding and subsequent yes-no recognition phases were administrated in an MRI scanner. Brain activation as measured by fMRI was examined during self-relevance judgements and anatomical images were used to search for correlation between the memory advantage for self-related items and grey matter density (GMD). In a second experiment, participants described the retrieval experience that had driven their recognition decisions (familiarity vs. recollective experience).The behavioural results revealed that the SRE and SRRE were impaired in AD patients compared to HC participants. Furthermore, verbal reports revealed that the retrieval of selfrelated information was preferentially associated with the retrieval of contextual details, such as source memory in the HC participants, but less so in the AD patients. Our imaging findings revealed that both groups activated the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) at encoding during self-relevance judgments. However, the variable and limited memory advantage for selfrelated information was associated with GMD in the lateral prefrontal cortex in the AD patients, a region supporting high-order processes linking self and memory. These findings suggest that even if AD patients engage MPFC during self-referential judgments, the retrieval of self-related memories is qualitatively and quantitatively impaired in relation with altered high-order processes in the lateral PFC.