Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Mar;26(1):80-4.
doi: 10.1037/a0021054.

Characterizing age-related changes in remembering the past and imagining the future

Brendan Gaesser  1 , Daniel C Sacchetti, Donna Rose Addis, Daniel L Schacter
Affiliations

Characterizing age-related changes in remembering the past and imagining the future

Brendan Gaesser et al. Psychol Aging. 2011 Mar.

Abstract

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIG. 1
FIG. 1
A) Mean number of internal and external details for Exp. 1 as a function of Age (Young, Old) and Task (Picture Description, Imagination). Error bars represent standard errors of the means. B) Mean number of internal and external details for Exp. 2 as a function of Age (Young, Old) and Task (Picture Description, Imagination, Memory). Error bars represent standard errors of the means.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Addis DR, Musicaro R, Pan L, Schacter DL. Episodic simulation of past and future events in older adults: Evidence from an experimental recombination task. Psychology and Aging in press. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Addis DR, Wong AT, Schacter DL. Remembering the past and imagining the future: Common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration. Neuropsychologia. 2007;45:1363–1377. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Addis DR, Wong AT, Schacter DL. Age-related changes in the episodic simulation of Future Events. Psychological Science. 2008;19:33–41. - PubMed
    1. Arbuckle TY, Gold DP. Aging, inhibition, and verbosity. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. 1993;48:225–232. - PubMed
    1. Coupland N, Coupland J. Discourse, identity and aging. In: Nussbaum JF, Coupland J, editors. Handbook of communication and aging research. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1995. pp. 79–103.

Publication types