Adult age differences in specific and gist associative episodic memory across short- and long-term retention intervals.

Abstract

Age-related deficits in associative episodic memory have been widely reported, but recent research suggests that some of these deficits occur for highly specific but not gist representations. It remains undetermined whether older adults' deficits in specific associative episodic memory, observed in long-term memory, are also present in short-term memory. We used a continuous associative recognition task to address this question. Fifty young and 50 older adults studied face-scene pairs, with memory tests occurring in both short-term and long-term memory. Memory tests featured intact (old) pairs, related (similar) pairs, and unrelated (dissimilar) pairs. On short-term memory tests, older adults were less accurate in classifying related pairs, which was manifest by age-related reductions in the probability of retrieving specific memory to engage in recollection rejection. However, older adults were capable of remembering specific details in short-term memory for intact probes but were less likely to remember specific details in long-term memory. Finally, older adults were always as capable as younger adults of remembering gist details. Results suggest that older adults do at least partially encode specific representations in short-term memory, and their access to these specific representations is cue dependent-they can do so when there is a large correspondence between encoding and retrieval conditions but are less likely to engage in deeper elaboration at retrieval. This limits their ability to remember specific details of associations to suppress false recognitions in short-term memory and to engage in veridical recognition in long-term memory. Public Significance StatementAdult aging is associated with a loss of memory for specific details of past experiences, yet little is known about how quickly older adults forget specific representations in episodic memory. The present study shows that older adults exhibit some losses in the ability to remember specific details of past episodes almost immediately after encountering those episodes. At the same time, given the right retrieval cues in short-term memory, older adults can successfully remember some specific details of a recently encoded episode as well as younger adults. Moreover, older adults can successfully remember past episodes at gist levels of representation in both short-and long-term memory.

Aging-related effects on the controlled retrieval of semantic information.

“…In general, the results of this study may align with the previous literature on associative memory showing that age-related deficits are limited to the retrieval of specific representations (Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, 2020, 2022). The performance pattern in this study is also similar to that observed in SA patients in controlled retrieval tasks.…”

Adult age-related changes in the specificity of episodic memory representations: A review and theoretical framework.

“…Can older adults also remember the gist of associations when preexisting schematic support is likely to be less helpful? This question was addressed recently by Greene and Naveh-Benjamin (2020, 2022a; cf. Greene et al, 2022).…”

“…Fuzzy-trace theory assumes that gist representations are more immune to decay and interference (Brainerd & Reyna, 1990, 2002, 2004), an assumption that has been supported in studies of narrative recall (Sekeres et al, 2016; Thorndyke, 1977). Nevertheless, gist representations likely also undergo some forgetting across time, as evident in recent studies with both young and older adults by Greene and Naveh-Benjamin (2022a, 2022b, 2023) showing losses across time not only of specific representations for associative memory but also in gist representations, albeit at a more protracted rate (i.e., losses in specific representations across time unfolded more rapidly).…”

“…When the retrieval cue is an exact reproduction of the originally studied item, the degree to which an individual must deeply elaborate on the contents of their memory is minimized. In this situation, older adults are depicted as retrieving the same number of specific features of the original episode as younger adults can, as old items are excellent retrieval cues for specific representations, even among older adults (Brainerd et al, 1999, 2019; Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, 2020, 2022a; Stahl & Klauer, 2008). However, when a similar lure is presented in a recognition experiment, the lure provides a good match to the gist representation of the original item but is a poor match for the original item’s specific representation (Brainerd et al, 1999, 2019).…”

“…Even if older adults initially establish specific representations to the same degree as younger adults, those representations may be more vulnerable to rapid forgetting. Indeed, Greene and Naveh-Benjamin (2022a) showed that, under some conditions, older adults could access specific representations of episodic associations as well as younger adults almost immediately after encoding face–scene pairs, but not in long-term memory, suggesting that the locus of age deficits may not be solely at encoding. Figure 5 depicts how to model a possibility where, even if older adults initially encode the same number of specific features as younger adults, over time, older adults forget more specific features.…”