The influence of semantic prior knowledge on associative memory in healthy aging

peer reviewedLa création d’un souvenir épisodique requiert un encodage des différents éléments composant l’événement cible, ainsi que des associations entre ces éléments individuels afin de former un souvenir global et complexe. Cette capacité à lier les éléments entre eux diminue dans le vieillissement normal engendrant un déclin en mémoire épisodique qualifié « d’associatif ». Des études suggèrent que ce déclin peut être atténué lorsque les associations à mémoriser préexistent en mémoire sémantique. Cette revue a pour but de synthétiser les travaux ayant examiné l’influence des connaissances préexistantes en mémoire associative dans le vieillissement normal. À travers une analyse des procédures utilisées dans les études passées, nous suggérons que le paradigme expérimental employé est le principal facteur qui détermine si les participants âgés peuvent utiliser efficacement leurs connaissances préexistantes pour reconnaître des associations. Plus précisément, la manière dont les paires de stimuli sont recombinées entre l’encodage et la récupération semble avoir une forte influence sur les résultats obtenus. Par ailleurs, nous suggérons un rôle du type de relation sémantique impliquée dans la tâche. La nature de la relation sémantique influencerait en effet la mise en place des processus de reconnaissance épisodiques qui évoluent différemment avec l’avancée en âge.The formation of a global and complex episodic memory requires memory for single units of information of the target event but also binding these elements together. This binding capacity diminishes in healthy aging leading to a so-called associative memory deficit. Interestingly, when support is provided during encoding thanks to semantic prior-knowledge (e.g., semantically related word pairs), this associative deficit can be alleviated. The aim of the present review is to summarize the current literature about the influence of prior-knowledge on associative memory performance in healthy aging. Through an analysis of the procedures that have been used in associative memory studies, we suggest two factors that appear to modulate the impact of prior knowledge on older adults’ associative memory. First, the way word pairs are recombined from the encoding to the retrieval phase is the main factor that has to be taken into account. Conditions that promote recall-to-reject discrimination processes lead to similar performance in older compared to younger adults, whereas conditions that require recollection discrimination lead to an age-related decline. Second, the nature of the semantic relations involved in the prior-knowledge support may influence older adults’ performance by modulating the contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition. Indeed, categorical semantic relations engage both recollection and familiarity-based discrimination, whereas thematic relations allow participants to rely on familiarity-based discrimination only. This latest observation is crucial when one considers recollection as a declining process, in contrast to familiarity, which remains spared in healthy aging. Therefore, future studies should explore the propensity of other semantic relations to alleviate the age-related associative memory decline

Well-being during COVID-19-related first lockdown: Relationship with autobiographical memory and experiential diversity

peer reviewe

Evidence for a dissociation between objective and subjective recollection in healthy aging: a multi-level analysis approach

Although healthy aging has been related to a decline in recollection as indexed by objective measures, the subjective experience of recollection seems to remain stable, leading to a so-called recollection dissociation. To date, however, behavioral studies have only examined these age-related effects using aggregated data across trials, such that the relationship between subjective and objective measures of recollection on a trial-by-trial basis remains unknown. In this study, young and older adults performed a cued recollection task with pictures associated with descriptive labels at encoding. At retrieval, participants were cued with the labels and were asked to answer a source memory question, rate the vividness of their memory of the associated picture, and recall as many details of the picture as they could. Results revealed that older adults showed poorer temporal source memory but produced higher vividness ratings than young adults. Moreover, older adults recalled fewer details - perceptual components - in the free recall task, even when the effects of narrative style and executive functioning were controlled, suggesting that their deficit is episodic in nature. Multilevel analyses revealed that, across trials, the relationship between subjective (vividness) and objective (free recall) recollection was greater in young than in older participants. These results provide direct evidence that, compared to young individuals, older adults rely less on the amount of retrieved episodic details to judge their subjective experiences while remembering

Older adults do not always rely on the amount of episodic details when considering the subjective vividness of their memories

Although healthy aging has been related to a decline in recollection as indexed by objective measures (e.g., source memory or free-recall), the subjective experience of recollection (e.g., vividness of memory) seems to remain stable. To date, however, behavioral studies have only examined these agerelated effects using aggregated data across trials, such that the relationship between subjective and objective measures of recollection on a trial-by-trial basis remains unknown. In this study, we conducted two experiments in which young and older adults performed a cued recollection task with pictures associated with descriptive labels at encoding. At retrieval, participants were cued with the labels and were asked to rate the vividness of their memory of the associated picture and to recall as many details of the picture as they could. In Experiment 1, multilevel analyses revealed that, across trials, the relationship between subjective (global vividness) and objective (free recall) recollection was greater in young than in older participants. Experiment 2’s results replicated and extended this finding by showing that, when requested to rate the vividness of more specific memory dimensions (e.g., persons and objects), older adults still did not calibrate their subjective judgements on the amount of retrieved episodic details to the same extent as young adults. These results provide direct evidence that, compared to young individuals, older adults rely to a lesser extent on the amount of retrieved episodic details to judge their subjective experiences while remembering

Interpersonal memory fidelity judgments and social bonding

peer reviewedIn interpersonal communication, people monitor other people’s memory to judge its credibility. We assessed whether the quality of the recollection of past events influenced how individuals rated the fidelity of others’ memory and whether ratings of memory fidelity were associated with social attitudes. Participants were presented with two types of memories narrated by another person: either rich recollections or general memories. After each narrative, participants rated how much they think the person has a faithful memory of what happened, whether they would be willing to interact with the narrator, and whether they feel empathy and trust towards the narrator. In two experiments, we found that participants judged memories to more closely match what really happened when the memories contained many specific details. Moreover, higher memory fidelity judgments were associated with more positive social attitudes towards the narrator, suggesting a role for interpersonal memory monitoring in social bonding

Older adults do not always rely on the amount of episodic details when judging the subjective quality of their memories

Although healthy aging is related to a decline in recollection asindexed by objective measures, the subjective experience of recollection remains stable.To date, however, studies have only examined these age-related effects using aggregated data across trials, such that the relationship between subjective and objective measures of recollection on a trial-by-trial basis remains unknown. To address this question, young and older adults performed a cued recollection task of pictures that wereassociated with descriptive labels at encoding. At retrieval, participants were cued with the labels and were asked to rate the vividness of their memory of the picture and to recall as many details of the picture as they could.Multilevelanalyses revealed that, across trials, the relationship between subjective (vividness) and objective (free recall) recollection was stronger in young than inolder participants.However, when requested to recall the content of the picture before assessing vividness, older adults calibrated their subjective judgements on the amount of retrieved details to the same extent as young adults. These results provide evidence that older adults not only retrieve fewer episodic details but also rely on these details to a lesser extent than young adults for judging the subjective quality of their memories