Wank Aubrey A, Mehl Matthias R, Andrews-Hanna Jessica R, Polsinelli Angelina J, Moseley Suzanne, Glisky Elizabeth L, Grilli Matthew D
Human Memory Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States.
Naturalistic Observation of Social Interaction Laboratory, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2020 Jun 26;14:238. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00238. eCollection 2020.
The retrieval of autobiographical memories is an integral part of everyday social interactions. Prior laboratory research has revealed that older age is associated with a reduction in the retrieval of autobiographical episodic memories, and the ability to elaborate these memories with episodic details. However, how age-related reductions in episodic specificity unfold in everyday social contexts remains largely unknown. Also, constraints of the laboratory-based approach have limited our understanding of how autobiographical semantic memory is linked to older age. To address these gaps in knowledge, we used a smartphone application known as the Electronically Activated Recorder, or "EAR," to unobtrusively capture real-world conversations over 4 days. In a sample of 102 cognitively normal older adults, we extracted instances where memories and future thoughts were shared by the participants, and we scored the shared episodic memories and future thoughts for their make-up of episodic and semantic detail. We found that older age was associated with a reduction in real-world sharing of autobiographical episodic and semantic memories. We also found that older age was linked to less episodically and semantically detailed descriptions of autobiographical episodic memories. Frequency and level of detail of shared future thoughts yielded weaker relationships with age, which may be related to the low frequency of future thoughts in general. Similar to laboratory research, there was no correlation between autobiographical episodic detail sharing and a standard episodic memory test. However, in contrast to laboratory studies, episodic detail production while sharing autobiographical episodic memories was weakly related to episodic detail production while describing future events, unrelated to working memory, and not different between men and women. Overall, our findings provide novel evidence of how older age relates to episodic specificity when autobiographical memories are assessed unobtrusively and objectively "in the wild."
自传体记忆的提取是日常社交互动中不可或缺的一部分。先前的实验室研究表明，年龄增长与自传体情景记忆提取的减少以及用情景细节阐述这些记忆的能力下降有关。然而，在日常社交情境中，与年龄相关的情景特异性降低是如何表现的，目前仍 largely 未知。此外，基于实验室方法的局限性限制了我们对自传体语义记忆与年龄增长之间联系的理解。为了填补这些知识空白，我们使用了一款名为电子激活记录仪（EAR）的智能手机应用程序，在4天内不显眼地捕捉现实世界中的对话。在102名认知正常的老年人样本中，我们提取了参与者分享记忆和未来想法的实例，并对分享的情景记忆和未来想法的情景和语义细节构成进行评分。我们发现，年龄增长与现实世界中自传体情景和语义记忆的分享减少有关。我们还发现，年龄增长与自传体情景记忆的情景和语义细节描述较少有关。分享未来想法的频率和细节程度与年龄的关系较弱，这可能与未来想法总体频率较低有关。与实验室研究类似，自传体情景细节分享与标准情景记忆测试之间没有相关性。然而，与实验室研究不同的是，分享自传体情景记忆时的情景细节生成与描述未来事件时的情景细节生成弱相关，与工作记忆无关，且男女之间没有差异。总体而言，我们的研究结果提供了新的证据，表明在自然环境中不显眼且客观地评估自传体记忆时，年龄与情景特异性之间的关系。
