Age Differences in Autobiographical Memory Specificity: It’s Not Just About Cognition

1. Age Differences in Autobiographical Memory Specificity: It’s Not Just About Cognition Lisa Emery & Meagan Griffin RESULTS INTRODUCTION Previous research has found that older adults have reduced specificity of autobiographical memory, a finding that has primarily been attributed to age differences in associative memory and/or executive function (e.g., Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2008; Piolino et al. 2010). Research in the clinical psychology literature, however, suggests that reduced autobiographical memory specificity can also result from emotion regulation strategies such as functional avoidance (Williams et al., 2007). Because older adults are thought to avoid retrieval of negative memories (e.g., Mather & Carstensen, 2005), we investigated whether age differences in emotion regulation strategies also influenced memory specificity. Conclusions Participant Characteristics • Age differences in autobiographical memory specificity were influenced by both associative memory and use of active coping strategies. These effects were independent of each other, and together accounted for nearly all the age-related variance in specificity. • There were no age differences in avoidant coping, and contrary to the functional avoidance hypothesis, avoidant coping did not influence memory specificity. • Overall, this suggests that age differences in affective processes combine with age differences in cognitive processes to influence autobiographical memory retrieval. * Age difference significant at p < .05 ** Age difference significant at p < .01 Limitations/Future Directions Correlations • Why does active coping result in reduced memory specificity? (e.g., perhaps focusing attention on solving the problem instead of dwelling on memory of it). • Avoidant coping questions from COPE don’t quite capture “functional avoidance” as defined by Williams et al. (2007). (e.g., “Truncated search” of memory to avoid negative affect from recall of unpleasant events) METHOD Participants CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE DIRECTIONS • 28 young adults (Ages 18-25; M = 19.3, SD = 1.7) • 29 older adults (Ages 64-85; M = 73.3, SD = 7.1) • Data collected as part of another study (see poster by Burkett et al.) • Participants were screened for cognitive problems using the Short Blessed • Specificity coding was not yet available for all participants REFERENCES Path Analysis Path Analysis Addis, D. R., Wong, A. T., & Schacter, D. L. (2008). Age-related changes in the episodic simulation of future events. Psychological Science, 19(1), 33-41. Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K.  (1989).  Assessing coping strategies:  A theoretically based approach.   Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267-283. Mather, M., & Carstensen, L. L. (2005). Aging and motivated cognition: The positivity effect in attention and memory. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(10), 496-502. Piolino, P., Coste, C., Martinelli, P., Macé, A. L., Quinette, P., Guillery-Girard, B., & Belleville, S. (2010). Reduced specificity of autobiographical memory and aging: Do the executive and feature binding functions of working memory have a role?. Neuropsychologia, 48(2), 429-440. Williams, J. M. G., Barnhofer, T., Crane, C., Herman, D., Raes, F., Watkins, E., & Dalgleish, T. (2007). Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder. Psychological bulletin, 133(1), 122. Measures Verbal Paired Associates • Cue-word autobiographical memory test; responses coded for specificity on a scale of 0-3 • WAIS-IV matrix reasoning • WMS-IV verbal paired associates • Modified version of the COPE (Carver et al., 1989) • Active coping questions • “I take additional action to try to get rid of the problem” • Avoidant coping questions (combo. of mental avoidance, behavioral avoidance, and denial) • “I pretend that it hasn’t really happened” +.30 -.41 Age Memory Specificity -.17 (n.s.) Active Coping +.29 -.45 Reprints may be obtained at agelabs.appstate.edu