Abstract
Episodic memory declines with older age, but it is unresolved whether this decline reflects reduced probability of successfully retrieving information from memory, or decreased precision of the retrieved information. Here, we used continuous measures of episodic memory retrieval in combination with computational mixture modeling of participants' retrieval errors to distinguish between these two potential accounts of age-related memory deficits. In three experiments, young and older participants encoded stimulus displays consisting of everyday objects varying along different perceptual features (e.g., location, color and orientation) in a circular space. At test, participants recreated the features of studied objects using a continuous response dial. Across all 3 experiments, we observed significant age-related declines in the precision of episodic memory retrieval, whereas significant age differences in retrieval success were limited to the most challenging task condition. Reductions in mnemonic precision were evident across different object features retained in long-term memory and persisted after controlling for age-related decreases in the fidelity of perception and working memory. The findings highlight impoverished precision of memory representations as one factor contributing to age-related episodic memory loss and suggest that the cognitive and neural changes associated with older age may differentially affect distinct aspects of episodic retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Highlights
Episodic memory enables us to recollect details of events from our personal pasts, such as recalling our last birthday party, or where we parked our car on our last visit to the supermarket
The orientation condition further had the lowest retrieval success out of the three feature conditions across both age groups (lower retrieval success than colour, t(44) = 6.47, p < .001, d = 1.81, and location, t(44) = 12.14, p < .001, d = .96), indicating that the only significant age differences in retrieval success were observed for the condition that resulted in the poorest overall performance
In contrast to Experiment 1, in the present experiment we observed significantly reduced probability of successful memory retrieval in the older group in the orientation condition
Summary
Episodic memory enables us to recollect details of events from our personal pasts, such as recalling our last birthday party, or where we parked our car on our last visit to the supermarket. The particular vulnerability of episodic memory to age-related decline in comparison to other cognitive domains, including other types of long-term memory, has been highlighted in previous studies (Nyberg et al, 2003; Rönnlund, Nyberg, Bäckman, & Nilsson, 2005), but the specific neurocognitive mechanisms underlying this impairment are yet to be fully characterised. It is unclear whether age-related memory reductions reflect a decreased probability of successfully retrieving information from memory, or more qualitative changes in the fidelity with which memory traces can be encoded into and retrieved from memor
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