Age effects in autobiographical memory depend on the measure

Abstract

Studies examining age effects in autobiographical memory have produced inconsistent results. This study examined whether a set of typical autobiographical memory measures produced equivalent results in a single participant sample. Five memory tests (everyday memory, autobiographical memory from the past year, autobiographical memory from age 11–17, word-cued autobiographical memory, and word-list recall) were administered in a single sample of young and older adults. There was significant variance in the tests’ sensitivity to age: word-cued autobiographical memory produced the largest deficit in older adults, similar in magnitude to word-list recall. In contrast, older adults performed comparatively well on the other measures. The pattern of findings was broadly consistent with the results of previous investigations, suggesting that (1) the results of the different AM tasks are reliable, and (2) variable age effects in the autobiographical memory literature are at least partly due to the use of different tasks, which cannot be considered interchangeable measures of autobiographical memory ability. The results are also consistent with recent work dissociating measures of specificity and detail in autobiographical memory, and suggest that specificity is particularly sensitive to ageing. In contrast, detail is less sensitive to ageing, but is influenced by retention interval and event type. The extent to which retention interval and event type interact with age remains unclear; further research using specially designed autobiographical memory tasks could resolve this issue.

Retrieval mode switching affects autobiographical memory accuracy and elaboration in ageing

“…These findings reveal that memory elaboration appears less influenced by the increased task demands of retrieval switching and more by the age-dependent shift from episodic to semantic retrieval. Support for this view can be found in a recent study from Mair and colleagues (Mair et al, 2021), who showed how autobiographical memory specificity, the ability of recalling unique events when the instructions required to do so, was associated with efficiency in executive abilities, whereas details production, the ability of describing the unfolding of the event, appears to be less dependent on such executive abilities.…”

“…The analysis of the details produced within memories provides a more detailed consideration of participants' ability to re-experience and elaborate each event (Levine et al, 2002). As these measurements, although similar, are not equally sensitive to ageing (Mair et al, 2021), we expected a different impact of task switching on our measures of interest, retrieval accuracy and detail elaboration. In particular, given that ageing is characterised by increased switching costs (for a metanalysis, see Wasylyshyn et al, 2011), we expected that switching between episodic and semantic retrieval modes would affect the performance of older adults, manifested as lower retrieval accuracy, both when comparing baseline and switching blocks, but also when comparing switch and non-switch trials.…”

Nonepisodic autobiographical memory details reflect attempts to tell a good story.

“…This contrasts with episodic AM, which refers to information pertaining to a specific event that happened only once, and lasting a day or less (e.g., Last summer John and I spent the day on a beach in France; Holland et al, 2012; Levine et al, 2002; Piolino et al, 2002; Viard et al, 2007). In this article, we investigate a recurring finding in the AM literature that remains so far unexplained: older adults’ tendency to report more nonepisodic memory details, relative to young adults (Addis et al, 2008; Aizpurua & Koutstaal, 2015; Beaman et al, 2007; Devitt et al, 2016; Levine et al, 2002; Madore et al, 2014; Mair et al, 2017, 2021; Piolino et al, 2006). This study aims to distinguish between two broad potential explanations for this age difference: that nonepisodic details are a marker of cognitive decline in older adults or that they reflect a shift in communicative preferences that biases older adults toward telling an entertaining story.…”

The Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Relationships Amongst a Negative-Individual Self-Concept, Episodic Detail in Past and Future Turning Point Narratives and Adolescents’ Depressive Symptoms

“…Specifically, episodic detail refers to events that are bound to a specific time and place (i.e., details concerning the who, what, when, and where); contain emotional, perceptual, and sensory details; and entail a subjective recollective experience (Fivush, 2011). Comparatively, semantic detail refers to events that occur repeatedly (e.g., attending English class) or exceed the length of one day (e.g., a trip to Australia in summer), and contain factual and general knowledge about the world (e.g., Wellington is the capital of New Zealand) and oneself (e.g., I am a high school student; Mair et al, 2021).…”

“…Memory specificity measures people's ability to retrieve a specific event that occurred at a particular time and place (e.g., my 21 st birthday party), compared to extended or categoric events. Episodic detail goes beyond locating an event in time and space and measures people's ability to engage in a recollective and elaborative experience (Mair et al, 2021). This is evidenced by the recall of rich contextual and emotional details (Mair et al, 2021); for example, "My best friend gave a speech at my 21 st birthday party.…”