How retellings shape younger and older adults' memories

Abstract

The way a story is retold influences the way it is later remembered; after retelling an event in a biased manner people subsequently remember the event in line with their distorted retelling. This study tested the hypothesis that this should be especially true for older adults. To test this, older and younger adults retold a story to be entertaining, to be accurate, or did not complete an initial retelling. Later, all participants recalled the story as accurately as possible. On this final test younger adults were unaffected by how they had previously retold the story. In contrast, older adults had better memory for the story's content and structure if they had previously retold the story accurately. Furthermore, for older adults, greater usage of storytelling language during the retelling was associated with lower subsequent recall. In summary, retellings exerted a greater effect on memory in older, compared with younger, adults. Keywords aging; memory retrieval; storytelling; memory distortion; narrative People alter their messages as a function of their audience (Bell, 1984;Clark, 1996;Clark & Carlson, 1982;Clark & Murphy, 1982;Krauss & Fussell, 1991). For example, people take into account how much information their audience needs in order to understand their message. Because of this, people provide simpler and clearer messages when speaking to children (e.g., DePaulo & Coleman, 1986), or non-native speakers (e.g., Bortfeld & Brennan, 1997) compared to peers. Similarly, people adjust their messages based on how much their audience wants (rather than needs) to know. For example, because distracted listeners do not provide appropriate feedback, people provide shorter messages when talking to distracted, rather than attentive, listeners (Pasupathi, Stallworth, & Murdoch, 1998; see also Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2000;Kuhlen & Brennan, 2010).People also tune their messages to be in line with their audience's attitudes. For instance, in some studies participants read ambiguous information that could reflect positive (e.g., Correspondence to: Sarah J. Barber, barbersa@usc.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Cogn Psychol (Hove) & Groll, 2005;Echterhoff, Higgins, Kopietz, & Groll, 2008;Higgins, 1992;Higgins & Rholes, 1978; Sedikes, 1990;Todorov, 2002).Interestingly, audience tuning can affect memory (e.g., Tversky & Marsh, 2000). After describing a target person to a biased audience, speakers later recall the target in line with their biased descriptions (e.g., Echterhoff, et al., 2005;Higgins & Rholes, 1978;Higgins, McCann, & Fondacaro, 1982;McCann, Higgins, & Fondacaro, 1991). Furthermore, their own impressions of the target fit their previous descriptions (e.g., Sedikides, 1990; see also McGregor & Holmes, 1999) at least when they have a desire to achieve commonalities with their audience (see Echterhoff, Higgins, & Levine, 2009). That is, people end up remembering and believing what they said, rather than what they experienced (see Marsh, 2007;Pasupathi, 2001).Similar results occur when examining ...

Fact vs. Affect in the Telephone Game: All Levels of Surprise Are Retold With High Accuracy, Even Independently of Facts

“… Davis et al (2015) have shown in a study on gist and detail that older populations (above 60) focus on gist. This could explain why the slightly shorter stories by older retellers in our studies preserved surprise affects at the same rate as younger retellers, since surprise is tied to the basic event and thereby likely to be captured as gist (for age differences in retellers, see also Barber and Mather, 2014 ; for narrative complexity in children, see Kulkofsky et al, 2008 ).…”

The Difference between Right and Wrong: Accuracy of Older and Younger Adults’ Story Recall

“…If the purpose of the story is to entertain the listener or facilitate social bonding, slight embellishments or the inclusion of inaccurate supplemental information may serve to enhance the story quality. Research from Barber and Mather [ 23 ] support this idea. In this study, they found that when older adults were explicitly told to focus on accuracy when initially retelling stories, they later recalled information from the story more accurately than older adults who initially retold the story for the purpose of being entertaining.…”

“…For example, in some situations, a conversation regarding an event that happened in the world may be geared toward entertaining the current listener. At other times, telling of the story focuses on the symbolic, deeper meaning, take-home moral of the event, or how it coheres with the larger story [ 14 , 23 ]. In such cases, accuracy of literal details of the event may be less of a priority.…”

“…Note, however, that the accuracy of the recalled gist and detail is not typically the focus of these studies. In the few instances in which accuracy of story recall has been examined, older adults recall gist better than detail and are overall less accurate than younger adults when recalling surface level details [ 16 , 23 ].…”

Aging in an Era of Fake News

“…One generative goal involves passing along knowledge. Older adults tell better stories than young adults, focusing on gist over details (Barber & Mather, 2014) and tuning to their audience; for example, they simplify stories and elaborate more when a child, rather than an experimenter, is listening. Online, older adults may overlook errors to share a moral message (e.g., about a political candidate or party) with young followers.…”