We provide support for the theoretical framework and empirical findings that associations in episodic memory can be retrieved from multiple levels of specificity and that adult aging is associated with declines in the ability to retrieve associations at specific levels of representation (Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, 2020). Young and old adult participants in two experiments – one in-person and one online – studied face-scene pairs and then completed an Intact/Recombined associative recognition test, which featured test pairs that were the same as original pairs, similar to those pairs at a highly specific level, similar at a broader level, or completely dissimilar. Participants also rated their confidence in their decisions. Results of measures of both memory accuracy and subjective confidence reports were similar across both experiments and age groups and showed that overall memory performance scaled with the amount of specificity needed to be retrieved, and that older adults were especially impaired in distinguishing highly similar foils. Moreover, confidence-accuracy analysis showed that participants were best able to calibrate their confidence when less specific information was needed in order to perform well, but these calibrations worsened at higher levels of specific retrieval, especially among older adults. The results indicate that episodic memory can be accessed on a continuum of specificity, providing empirical support for a levels of specificity framework, as part of a specificity principle of memory (e.g., Surprenant and Neath, 2009), and in line with the effort to identify universal invariants of natural phenomena, which are somewhat scarce in psychology.
Levels of specificity in episodic memory: Insights from response accuracy and subjective confidence ratings in older adults and in younger adults under full or divided attention.