PEOPLE MY AGE REMEMBER THESE THINGS BETTER

Abstract

We conducted a survey to compare a group of older adults’ and a group of younger adults’ beliefs regarding their own and each other's memory abilities. We also asked both age groups to identify items they believed older adults remember well. The survey was returned by 185 older (ages 60‐92) and 184 younger (ages 17‐39) participants. Of the 30 items we generated older adults reported that they would remember 23 better than younger adults would and 7 worse than younger adults would, and younger adults reported that they would remember 12 of the items better and 18 of them worse than older adults. Both age groups also generated many items that they believed older adults remember better than younger adults do. Finally, respondents generated items that they believed adults in their own age group had to remember routinely that adults in the other age group did not. The two groups agreed that older adults would spend more time and have more difficulty learning lines for presentation to an audience than would younger adults. Most of the older adults reported that their memories had changed; most of the younger adults reported that their memories had not changed. The belief that although older adults’ memory is worse than young adults’ they still remember some things better than the young is viewed as a realistic assessment, and implications for future research are discussed.