Effects of Aging on General and Specific Memory for Impressions

Abstract

Despite the number of documented declines in memory with age, memory for socioemotional information can be preserved into older adulthood. These studies assessed whether memory for character information could be preserved with age, and how the general versus specific nature of the information tested affected outcomes. We hypothesized that memory for general impressions would be preserved with age, but that memory for specific details would be impaired. In two experiments, younger and older adults learned character information about individuals characterized as positive, neutral, or negative. Participants then retrieved general impressions and specific information for each individual. The testing conditions in Experiment 2 discouraged deliberate recall. In Experiment 1, we found that younger performed better than older adults on both general and specific memory measures. Although age differences in memory for specific information persisted in Experiment 2, we found that younger and older adults remembered general impressions to a similar extent when testing conditions encouraged the use of "gut impressions" rather than deliberate retrieval from memory. We conclude that aging affects memory for specific character information, but memory for general impressions can be age-equivalent. Furthermore, there is no evidence for a positivity bias or differences in the effects of valence on memory across the age groups.

The reciprocal relationship between episodic memory and future thinking: How the outcome of predictions is subsequently remembered

“…In our past work (Frankenstein et al., 2020 ), we used sentences that implied extroversion and openness to experience, and in the current stimuli, we added behaviors implying conscientiousness and agreeableness to better understand memory effects for prediction outcomes for other types of trait information associated with targets. Furthermore, sentences were constructed to have two or three idea units, following past work (Limbert et al., 2018 ), which would allow participants the opportunity to remember multiple details associated with each behavior performed by targets. For example, a sentence that reflects high extroversion, such as “This person went over to greet the new neighbor that had moved in next door,” was composed of three idea units: “went over to greet,” “new neighbor,” and “moved in next door.” Behavioral sentences were counterbalanced to appear with different social targets across participants.…”