Retrospective Reports by Healthy Intelligent Elderly People of Personal Events of their Adult Lives

Abstract

The veridical nature of recollections of the same group of 60 adults over 40 years is examined. Parents of the subjects of the Berkeley Guidance Study, mean age 68.8 when seen, were intensively interviewed at three time periods from 1929 to 1969. Twenty-four factual and 24 attitudinal variables were studied. All information, from questions about education, occupation and place of birth, to relationship and bond with spouse, parents and children, about which the parents reported two or more times, is included. Some parents were more consistent reporters than others. Factual variables were recalled with greater agreement than attitudinal variables. Analysis of ratings of happiness of the parent's childhood found an increasing number of parents reporting having had a happy childhood at succeeding interviews. Reports were no more and no less consistent for periods when parents were younger or when time periods were shorter. However, parents' perceptions of factual and attitudinal variable showed a drop in the middle period, when their children were 17 years old.

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