The present study aimed to investigate potential dissociations in memory recall for intentionally and incidentally encoded information in typical ageing and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Groups of healthy younger adults, healthy older adults, and patients with MCI completed a newly developed task that distinguishes memory recall for information that has been encoded intentionally (instructions were provided about the subsequent retrieval of the target information) or incidentally (no instructions were provided about the subsequent retrieval of the target information). Significant differences were observed between healthy younger and older individuals in memory recall for certain intentionally encoded information but not for incidentally encoded information. In contrast, aMCI patients exhibited significant deficits in memory recall for both intentionally and incidentally encoded information, which were disproportionately larger for incidentally encoded information. The results provide evidence of dissociable effects of typical and atypical ageing on memory recall depending on the encoding mode involved.

By conceptually replicating and extending Butler et al., (2006), this work aims to explore how manipulating the number of lures and item difficulty in a multiple-choice (MC) test affects younger and older adults’ memory performance. Specifically, we examined semantic memory performance through the use of age-normed general knowledge questions with 1, 3, or 5 lures and systematically manipulated item difficulty, which was operationalized based on the Proximity to Retrieval Success framework (Umanath et al., 2025). Preliminary results indicate that older adults’ accuracy decreases as a function of the number of lures. As for item difficulty, accuracy decreased from 1 to 3 lures with few changes between 3 and 5 lures. This experiment furthers our understanding of how the number of lures on a MC test may differentially affect the recovery and maintenance of marginal knowledge in younger and older adults.

Involuntary autobiographical memory, encompassing both past events and future projections, is described as a fundamental mode of mental time travel that remains relatively intact with age, especially in the case of involuntary memories. Among younger adults, a higher frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories is associated with a negative cognitive style and increased emotional distress. The current study examined the relationship between involuntary autobiographical memory, mental health, and cognitive functioning in a sample of 75 older adults, taking into account their emotion regulation strategies. The results indicated that higher frequencies of both involuntary autobiographical memories and future projections were positively correlated with anxiety symptoms and rumination but showed no significant association with depressive symptoms or self-esteem. However, only the occurrence of involuntary future projections predicted anxiety severity in older adults. This relationship was mediated by elevated rumination levels and moderated by cognitive functioning and the use of specific emotion regulation strategies.

Remembering associations of individual items is especially challenging for older adults and these challenges could be attenuated in favourable conditions. In three studies, we adopted a trial-based item prelearning approach to minimize older adults’ associative deficit for high-meaning word pairs (Study 1) or face-occupation pairs (Study 2), and low-meaning face-name pairs (Study 3). The Process Dissociation Paradigm was used to assess item memory with a pair recognition test (both intact and rearranged pairs as OLD) and associative memory with an associative recognition test (only intact pairs as OLD). The results revealed significant age by memory type interaction (i.e., an index of the associative deficit in older adults) only in Study 3, but not in Study 1 or 2. The results suggest the effectiveness of the trial-based item prelearning in supporting older adults to remember meaningful associations as well as younger adults.