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 ageing 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.

Keywords:

• Autobiographical memory
• Future events
• Ageing
• Positivity effects

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Institute on Ageing grant AG030345.

Notes

¹We also analysed source scores that were adjusted for item recognition (e.g., [p”future”]/[p”future” + p”past”]), source scores that were adjusted for errors to nonstudied items (via subtraction), and confidence judgements that were given to correct source responses. Each of these analyses yielded a similar overall pattern of results as the unadjusted scores.

²As an example, for the cue “cheer” an older adult initially generated “In the past I remember an event where I … gave a very good performance and the audience cheered”. In the second session, they misattributed “cheer” to the future condition and generated “I will perform and the audience will appreciate it and cheer”.

³As noted by a reviewer, another factor that may have increased the level of detail for positive over negative future events was emotional intensity or arousal. This is a reasonable hypothesis, but we cannot test it because we did not measure emotional intensity. However, D'Argembeau and Van der Linden (2004) reported that emotional intensity did not differ between positive and negative future events in younger adults, which is inconsistent with an intensity explanation.