Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Behavioral and EEG investigations of inter-generational collaborative emotional memory

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Marie Diagne¹, Leonard Faul¹, Ido Davidesco¹, Suparna Rajaram², Elizabeth Kensinger¹; ¹Boston College, ²Stony Brook University

When adults collaborate when remembering information, their memories become similar to one another (e.g., Greeley & Rajaram, 2023). However, most research has examined collaboration among younger adults and has examined the collaborative remembering of non-emotional information. Our planned research examines how intergenerational collaboration affects emotional memory. We plan to adapt a collaborative emotional memory paradigm previously tested with younger adults (Choi, Kensinger, & Rajaram, 2017) and extend it to investigate the effects of intergenerational (young [ages 18-35] and older [60+] adult) collaboration. When tested individually, memory patterns often show an age x valence interaction: Younger adults show a negativity bias while older adults show a positivity bias (e.g., Mather & Carstensen, 2005). We hypothesize that intergenerational collaboration will lead to a reduced interaction between age and valence, consistent with collaboration bringing individuals’ memories into alignment with other members of their collaborative group. We additionally plan to incorporate electrophysiological (EEG) monitoring during the collaboration phase. We will examine how the brain-to-brain synchrony (BBS) of the group relates to the effects of intergenerational collaboration on memory. Our primary hypothesis is that the pattern of behavioral results just described (i.e., collaboration minimizing age x valence interactions in intergenerational groups) will arise in those intergenerational collaborative groups that have high BBS. These results will be important to the field, by providing the first insights into how intergenerational collaboration affects the emotional memories that individuals retain.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions