ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
Enhanced episodic specificity and socioemotional content in older adults' everyday autobiographical thoughts.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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3 citing papers in PubMed.
- In here and out there: Evidence that age-related differences in memory specificity are attenuated in natural social conversations.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2026Article
- Spontaneous Goal-Related Cognition Predicts Well-Being and Real-World Goal Attainment Across Adulthood in a Think-Aloud Study.Research square · 2026Article
- The advantages of aging: greater stability of self-representation in older adults is linked to higher well-being.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Observational
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7 authors.
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Abstract
Cognitive aging research has long observed that older adults' autobiographical memories and future thoughts, as assessed in laboratory contexts, lack spatiotemporal detail compared to young adults. Does this pattern also hold in everyday contexts? Across two studies, we examined characteristics of autobiographical thinking in real-world settings using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Study 1 included an adult lifespan sample (N = 3,847). Study 2 (preregistered) included 217 young and older adults whose autobiographical memories were also assessed with a traditional lab-based interview. Contrary to lab-based findings commonly reported in the literature, older adults across both studies reported more episodic specificity in their everyday autobiographical thoughts than younger adults, as well as shifts toward positive and social focus rather than on the self. Linguistic analyses validated self-report data, revealing greater concreteness and perceptual detail with increasing age. Together, these findings highlight discrepancies between measurement approaches in autobiographical thinking in older age, emphasizing the significance of motivational and contextual factors in its study.
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