Age-related positivity effects and autobiographical memory detail: Evidence from a past/future source memory task

Abstract

This study investigated whether the age-related positivity effect strengthens specific event details in autobiographical memory. Participants retrieved past events or imagined future events in response to neutral or emotional cue words. Older adults rated each kind of event more positively than younger adults, demonstrating an age-related positivity effect. We next administered a source memory test. Participants were given the same cue words and tried to retrieve the previously generated event and its source (past or future). Accuracy on this source test should depend on the recollection of specific details about the earlier generated events, providing a more objective measure of those details than subjective ratings. We found that source accuracy was greater for positive than negative future events in both age groups, suggesting that positive future events were more detailed. In contrast, valence did not affect source accuracy for past events in either age group, suggesting that positive and negative past events were equally detailed. Although aging can bias people to focus on positive aspects of experience, this bias does not appear to strengthen the availability of details for positive relative to negative past events.

Episodic memory and event construction in aging and amnesia

“…One possibility is that these omissions were also due to deficits in retention: that is, at high mnemonic loads, older adults had deficits retaining all the information over time. Results compatible with this interpretation were obtained recently by Gallo, Korthauer, McDonough, Teshale, and Johnson (2011) who tested younger and older adults on a future imagining paradigm, and measured memory for both the details of each event and source memory (i.e. task condition), one day later.…”

“…A second possibility is that older adults' poor metamemory abilities (Dunlosky & Connor, 1997;Shah & Craik, 1989) lead them to underestimate task demands and prevents them from exerting the necessary effort needed to perform well (see also Hertzog & Dunlosky, 2011). Gallo et al (2011) also found that subjective ratings of task performance were not related to source memory in older adults who completed a future imagining task, providing further evidence that such ratings in older adults may reflect other processes.…”

The reality of the past versus the ideality of the future: emotional valence and functional differences between past and future mental time travel

“…It appears that negative emotion may serve such behavioral adjustment in the case of past MTT, whereas it may be absent or highly reduced in future MTT. Consistent with this idea, recent findings suggest that positive future events are remembered with more detail than negative future events, whereas positive and negative past events are remembered with equal detail (Gallo et al, 2011). This does not mean that imagining a negative event in your personal future is always maladaptive.…”

Age influences the relation between subjective valence ratings and emotional word use during autobiographical memory retrieval

“…Research from the past two decades has revealed that older adults tend to report more positive personal memories than their younger counterparts (e.g., Comblain, D'Argembeau, & Van der Linden, 2005;Dijkstra & Kaup, 2005;Gallo, Korthauer, McDonough, Teshale, & Johnson, 2011;Rubin & Schulkind, 1997;Singer, Rexhaj, & Baddeley, 2007). This pattern has been demonstrated in studies where participants are asked to retrieve events associated with verbal retrieval cues (Dijkstra & Kaup, 2005;Gallo et al, 2011;Rubin & Schulkind, 1997) and when participants are asked to retrieve important events from their pasts (Dijkstra & Kaup, 2005;Rubin & Schulkind, 1997;Singer et al, 2007).…”