Schedule of Events | Symposia

The influence of shared age identity on the specificity of autobiographical memory

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Bryan Hong¹ (bryan.hong@mail.utoronto.ca), Jialin Du¹, Kailin Summers², Morgan Barense^1,3, Signy Sheldon²; ¹University of Toronto, Toronto ON, Canada, ²McGill University, Montreal QC, Canada, ³Rotman Research Institute, Toronto ON, Canada

When recalling events from one’s personal past, older adults typically generate fewer specific episodic details and more general non-episodic details than younger adults. Although these differences in autobiographical recall tend to be attributed to age-related structural and functional changes in the brain, other factors may potentially contribute. For example, past research has demonstrated how similarities and differences in social characteristics between communication partners can affect how we recall memories—this may be especially pertinent given that many studies investigating autobiographical memory in aging use paradigms involving interviews. In the current study, we investigate whether shared age identity between communication partners may influence the specificity of autobiographical recall. Here, we analyzed a dataset from an online study where younger (n = 71) and older (n = 72) adult participants recalled past events to fictional younger and older adult listeners. We then used the Autobiographical Interview scoring protocol to quantify the amount of episodic and non-episodic detail from participant responses. We found that shared age identity between communication partners had an effect on memory recall, with older adults tending to produce fewer episodic details when recalling an event to a younger adult listener. These results demonstrate how considering social factors, in addition to age-related changes in the brain, can provide a more fulsome understanding of autobiographical memory across the lifespan.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic