scholarly journals Age effects in autobiographical memory depend on the measure

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. e0259279
Author(s):  
Ali Mair ◽  
Marie Poirier ◽  
Martin A. Conway
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Retention Interval ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Word List ◽  
Age Effects ◽  
The Other ◽  
Event Type ◽  
Memory Tests ◽  
The Past

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.

scholarly journals Not all measures of naturalistic memory are sensitive to ageing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Mair ◽  
marie poirier ◽  
Martin A. Conway
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Test Word ◽  
Word List ◽  
Age Effects ◽  
The Other ◽  
Face Validity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Face

Published age effects in naturalistic memory are inconsistent. This study examined whether a set of typical naturalistic memory measures produced equivalent results in a single participant sample. Four naturalistic memory tests (everyday memory, autobiographical memory from the past year, autobiographical memory from age 11-17, word-cued autobiographical memory) and one laboratory test (word-list recall) were administered to 20 young and 20 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, which were more ecologically valid. Retention interval, executive function, and event characteristics influenced performance, but none of these factors could account for the pattern of age effects. Further research is needed to understand the face validity of these naturalistic memory tasks, and future investigations should be mindful of their ecological validity.

Reminiscing With Mothers and Others: Autobiographical Memory in Young Two-Year-Olds

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith A. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Retention Interval ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
The Past ◽  
Information Requests ◽  
Remote Past

Abstract This study investigated effects of maternal elicitation style, repeated recall sessions, and retention interval on 2-year-olds' autobiographical memory. Ten mothers and their children from 24 to 30 months of age verbally recalled the same four events once a week for 4 weeks. Two weeks later, an experimenter interviewed children about the same events as well as about four new events. Half of the events had taken place in the recent past (up to 6 months); the other half were from the remote past (6 to 10 months). Children recalled specific information about events occurring up to 10 months in the past, although they recalled more information about recent events than about remote events. Chil-dren were very much dependent on an adult partner to cue their recall. If specific cues were not provided, children rarely volunteered information. Chil-dren's conversations with their mothers affected their recall with the experi-menter: Children responded to more information requests, produced more offers of information, and recalled more specific information about events they had previously discussed with mothers than when recalling new events with the experimenter. However, children recalled more information with their mothers than with the experimenter, and prior discussions with mothers did not increase the amount of information children recalled with the experimenter. Two mater-nal elicitation styles were identified that were related to differences in children's responsiveness and amount of recall: Children of high elaboration mothers were more responsive and recalled more information than children of low elaboration mothers. (Psychology)

scholarly journals Autobiographical memory in two older adults over a twenty-year retention interval

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Lhost Catal ◽  
Joseph M. Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Retention Interval ◽  
Autobiographical Memory

scholarly journals Searching for the Past: Exploring the Dynamics of Direct and Generative Autobiographical Memory Reconstruction Among Young and Cognitively Normal Older Adults

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aubrey Anne Ladd Wank ◽  
Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna ◽  
Matthew D. Grilli
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Specific Detail ◽  
Cognitively Normal ◽  
The Past ◽  
Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Age Related

Episodic autobiographical memories (EAMs) can come to mind through two retrieval routes, one direct (i.e., an EAM is retrieved almost instantaneously) and the other generative (i.e., by using autobiographical/general knowledge to cue an EAM). It is well established that normal cognitive aging is associated with a reduction in the retrieval of EAMs, but the contributions of direct or generative reconstruction to the age-related shift toward general memories remain unknown. Prior studies also have not clarified whether similar cognitive mechanisms facilitate the ability to successfully reconstruct EAMs and elaborate them in event-specific detail. To address these gaps in knowledge, young and older participants were asked to reconstruct EAMs using a “think-aloud” paradigm and then describe in detail a subset of retrieved memories. An adapted scoring procedure was implemented to categorize memories accessed during reconstruction, and the Autobiographical Interview (AI) scoring procedure was utilized for elaboration scoring. Results indicated that in comparison to young adults, older adults not only engaged in direct retrieval less often than young adults, but they also more often ended generative retrieval at general events instead of EAMs. The ability to elaborate EAMs with internal details was positively associated with the ability to use generative retrieval to reconstruct EAMs in both young and older adults, but there was no relationship between internal detail elaboration and direct retrieval in either age group. Taken together, these results indicate age-related differences in direct and generative retrieval contribute to overgeneral autobiographical memory and they support a connection between generative retrieval and elaboration.

Gender differences in the content of preschool children’s recollections

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 563-569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pirko Tõugu ◽  
Tiia Tulviste ◽  
Kristi Suits
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Event ◽  
The Past ◽  
Preschool Period

Personal recollections constitute autobiographical memory that develops intensively during the preschool years. The two-wave longitudinal study focuses on gender differences in preschool children’s independent recollections. The same children ( N = 275; 140 boys, 135 girls) were asked to talk about their previous birthday and the past weekend at the ages of 4 and 6. Interactions were coded for content. Boys talked more about themselves and about different nonsocial aspects of the events. Girls talked more about the other people with whom they had jointly experienced the past event. It seems that gender differences in children’s recollections appear early and increase during the preschool period.

What to say to a skeptical metaphysician: A defense manual for cognitive and behavioral scientists

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 603-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Ross ◽  
David Spurrett
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Behavioral Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

A wave of recent work in metaphysics seeks to undermine the anti-reductionist, functionalist consensus of the past few decades in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. That consensus apparently legitimated a focus on what systems do, without necessarily and always requiring attention to the details of how systems are constituted. The new metaphysical challenge contends that many states and processes referred to by functionalist cognitive scientists are epiphenomenal. It further contends that the problem lies in functionalism itself, and that, to save the causal significance of mind, it is necessary to re-embrace reductionism.We argue that the prescribed return to reductionism would be disastrous for the cognitive and behavioral sciences, requiring the dismantling of most existing achievements and placing intolerable restrictions on further work. However, this argument fails to answer the metaphysical challenge on its own terms. We meet that challenge by going on to argue that the new metaphysical skepticism about functionalist cognitive science depends on reifying two distinct notions of causality (one primarily scientific, the other metaphysical), then equivocating between them. When the different notions of causality are properly distinguished, it is clear that functionalism is in no serious philosophical trouble, and that we need not choose between reducing minds or finding them causally impotent. The metaphysical challenge to functionalism relies, in particular, on a naïve and inaccurate conception of the practice of physics, and the relationship between physics and metaphysics.

Level of Processing and Age Affect Involuntary Conceptual Priming of Weak but not Strong Associates

2004 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 159-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Ramponi ◽  
Alan Richardson-Klavehn ◽  
John M. Gardiner
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Free Association ◽  
Cued Recall ◽  
Age Effects ◽  
Older Age ◽  
Memory Tests ◽  
Conceptual Priming ◽  
Retrieval Strategies ◽  
Incidental Condition ◽  
Level Of Processing

Abstract. Memory for weak and strong semantic associates was compared in intentional associate-cued-recall and incidental free-association tests. This design yielded four conditions (weak/intentional, strong/intentional, weak/incidental, and strong/incidental) on which younger and older adults were compared. Level of processing (LOP) and age effects occurred for the weak/intentional, strong/intentional, and weak/incidental conditions, but not for the strong/incidental condition. Because participants could not distinguish weak from strong associates during the memory tests, these results suggest that free-association priming was involuntary and was not contaminated by voluntary retrieval strategies. Instead, they suggest that encoding deficits related to shallower LOP and older age reduce involuntary free-association priming mainly for associates without cohesive preexperimental representations.

scholarly journals Reminiscence groupwork and autobiographical memory as part of meaningful activities

Groupwork ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-87
Author(s):  
Andrew P. Allen ◽  
Mary Lee Tully ◽  
Desmond O’Neill ◽  
Richard A.P. Roche
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Memory Impairment ◽  
Memory Recall ◽  
Autobiographical Memories ◽  
Group Activities ◽  
The Past ◽  
With Memory

The current paper describes a reminiscence group activity session held as part of meaningful activities engagement for older adults. Topics of reminiscence included both autobiographical memories and memories of broader historical events from the past. Participants included those with memory impairment and those without, and participants with healthy memory were helpful in prompting memories in participants with memory impairment. Semantic and episodic autobiographical memory were assessed at baseline and following the end of both group activities, using the Episodic Autobiographical Memory Interview (EAMI) and quality of life was assessed using the Quality of Life AD-scale (QOL-AD). The reminiscence intervention did not significantly affect autobiographical memory recall or quality of life. However, oral reminiscence was reported to have increased outside of the reminiscence sessions.

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