Memory of historical events

Abstract

Younger (mean age = 20) and older (mean age = 64) adults were asked to recall the dates and make recency judgments for historical events that occurred in each of three time periods between 1862 and 1977. Overall there were no age differences in either the number of correct dates or the number of correct recency judgments. However, younger adults tended to perform better than older adults on events that occurred most recently, and performed significantly better on events that occurred during the respective times of their youth. In addition, somewhat different patterns of performance on the two dependent measures suggested that detailed information about events is lost with time, but that more general information may not decline with time.