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. 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.

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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.
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