A positivity effect in autobiographical memory, but not phonemic fluency, in older adults

Abstract

To investigate whether processing fluency or cognitive control processes underlie aging-related positivity effects in memory, we compared retrieval of words on a fluency task, and of events on an autobiographical task, in younger and older adults. No positivity effect in word output was found on the fluency task, though older adults output more neutral words. For our autobiographical task, participants wrote descriptions of personal events related to cue words (3 each of positive, negative, neutral). They then classified their memories by valence, and subsequently rated how they 'felt now' about each. Older adults output more autobiographical memories classified as positive, and rated their memories more positively than did younger adults. We suggest the aging-related positivity effect emerges in service of emotion regulation, and is primarily observed when the cognitive task allows for personal evaluation and/or engages a reflective style of processing, as on an autobiographical but not a fluency task.

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