Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Psychol Aging. 2011 Mar;26(1):80-4. doi: 10.1037/a0021054.
When remembering past events or imagining possible future events, older adults generate fewer episodic details than do younger adults. These results support the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis: deficits in retrieving episodic details underlie changes during memory and imagination. To examine the extent of this age-related reduction in specificity, we compared performance on memory and imagination tasks to a picture description task that does not require episodic memory. In two experiments, older adults exhibited comparable specificity reductions across all conditions. These findings emphasize the need to consider age-related changes in imagination and memory in a broader theoretical context.
当老年人回忆过去的事件或想象可能的未来事件时,他们生成的情节细节比年轻人少。这些结果支持了构建性情节模拟假说:检索情节细节的缺陷是记忆和想象过程中变化的基础。为了检验这种与年龄相关的特异性降低的程度,我们将记忆和想象任务的表现与不需要情节记忆的图片描述任务进行了比较。在两项实验中,老年人在所有条件下都表现出相当的特异性降低。这些发现强调了在更广泛的理论背景下考虑想象和记忆与年龄相关的变化的必要性。