Time-orientations of older adults in group conversations and their association with memory functioning

Abstract

This study investigated the time orientation of older adults in group conversations and its association with their memory functioning. We hypothesized that those with a greater ability to memorize recently accessed information would talk about more recent topics in natural conversations. To test this hypothesis, we used dictation data from older adults’ group conversations and categorized their utterances in terms of the time to which the utterances refer. While inheriting the conventional coding categories for the temporal focus of the utterances, Past, Present, and Future, this study assigned a new category, Recent, to an utterance that referred to an event within the past month to distinguish between recent and remote memories. We further classified utterances concerning whether they were experience-based or knowledge-based, based on the distinction between two types of declarative memories: episodic and semantic memories. We found that the frequency of knowledge-based utterances had significant positive associations with memory functioning if they were Recent-tagged. However, the frequency of experience-based utterances had no significant association with memory functions, irrespective of whether the sentence was Past- or Recent-tagged. Based on the results, we discussed what type of intervention program would be effective in preserving or improving memory function in older adults.