Older adults share fewer memories as they age

When people reach a certain age, they have accumulated enough life experience to have many stories to tell about life “in their day”.

However, a new study suggests that the older a person is, the less likely they are to share memories of their past experiences. And when they share memories, they don’t describe them in as much detail as younger people do.

The results of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Arizona and published in the journal. Frontiers in human neuroscience, echo previous findings from laboratory investigations that suggest that memory exchange decreases with age.

The UArizona study concluded in a new way: “eavesdropping” on older adults’ conversations “in nature.”

Most of the memory research is done in a laboratory, where participants are often asked to memorize lists or to recall and describe specific memories from the past. UArizona researchers wanted to know how often older adults spontaneously bring back memories in the course of their daily conversations, outside of a controlled laboratory setting.

“This study really gives us one of the first glimpses of people sharing these memories in their daily lives,” said study lead author Matthew Grilli, an assistant professor in the UArizona Department of Psychology.

Over the course of four days, the daily conversations of 102 cognitively healthy older adults, ages 65 to 90, were monitored with the EAR or Electronically Activated Recorder, a smartphone app that allows researchers to record random samples of the conversations of study participants.

Participants kept their phones on them for the duration of the study, and the EAR captured 30-second snippets every six to 18 minutes every day. Participants did not know where the recordings started or ended.

The researchers then analyzed the audio and calculated the number of times the participants shared autobiographical memories or memories of their past experiences.

“We found that older people in our study shared fewer memories,” said study lead author Aubrey Wank, a graduate student in psychology from UArizona. “Additionally, we found that the level of detail also decreased with age as people described these memories.”

It is important for people to remember and share memories, Grilli said. Doing so can help them connect with others. It can also guide planning and decision-making and help people find meaning in other life events and circumstances.

The reason why memory swap decreases with age is not entirely clear, but it may be related to age-related changes in the brain, Grilli and Wank said.

“There are a number of regions in the brain that seem to play a role in how often we think about our personal past or future,” Grilli said. “These areas of the brain tend to show changes with advancing age, and the idea is that because of these changes, older adults may reflect less on their past and personal future when talking to other people.”

While the study focused specifically on older adults, future research might consider how that population compares to a younger sample, and whether the audience a person is speaking to affects how often memories are shared, Wank said.

“Eavesdropping” on the brain

Using the EAR app study could have implications for how researchers study memory and cognition in the future.

Developed by UArizona professor of psychology and study co-author Matthias Mehl, the EAR began as an independent recording device designed to help researchers obtain more natural observations of people’s everyday lives. Since then, it has become a mobile application that has proven to be a valuable tool for psychologists studying social interactions. The memory study suggests that EAR may also benefit neuropsychology researchers like Grilli and Wank, who are interested in the relationship between the brain and behavior.

“Assessing cognition on a smartphone is like having a mobile neuropsychologist,” Grilli said. “It follows you and collects a lot of data about your cognition, and that could give us a better chance not only to get a more accurate estimate of your learning and memory, but also to be able to track changes in cognition over time. ” “

Being able to track those changes could help researchers better understand how cognition evolves in older adults, as well as in other populations, such as those with depression or risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease.

“One of the reasons we are really interested in better monitoring of cognitive decline is because we are learning that diseases like Alzheimer’s are affecting cognition probably decades before obvious symptoms emerge,” Grilli said. “The idea that we can develop tools that can track change sooner is intriguing, and it will be important to see if smartphone apps can do that.”