People often misremember their past feelings, and these errors may vary with age. We examined this in two real-world contexts: the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic. One week after the election, younger and older adults reported either their specific emotions about the election outcome or their general mood. All participants reported their current COVID-19 worry levels. Six months later, after COVID-19 vaccines were introduced, participants recalled these prior feelings. Memory for election-related feelings depended upon feeling type. Participants overestimated the intensity of their prior mood, but accurately recalled specific emotions about the election. Unexpectedly, older adults disappointed by the election exhibited an age-related negativity effect and were more likely to overestimate their prior negative mood. Similarly, for COVID-19 worry, older adults were more likely to overestimate prior worry levels. These findings suggest that positivity effects typically observed in lab settings may not always manifest in real-world contexts.

Most research in individuals with early-stage dementia emphasizes memory omissions and errors using standard paradigms (e.g., DRM). We investigated, for the first time, the social contagion of false memories in individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and mild dementia. After viewing 6 household scenes, participants completed an activity where items never presented before were suggested (i.e., social contagion). We compared rates of false recall and performance on a source monitoring recognition test across three groups: MCI (N = 17), dementia (N = 12), and healthy older adults (N = 18). There was a significant difference in true recall between the groups (ηp2 = .34) but not in false recall (p = .232). Results of the source monitoring task indicated similar source identifications between healthy individuals and those with MCI. Results are discussed within the source monitoring framework, with implications for nonpharmacological interventions in older people with clinical memory impairments.

We often think about upcoming events in our lives, but doing so can affect memory. Specifically, imagining a positive future event biases us to remember the actual event more positively. But in contrast to typical age-related increases in false memory, older adults demonstrate less of a memory bias after future thinking than younger adults. The current research investigates why future thinking interferes less with memory with age. If age-related reductions in the episodic detail of imagination prevents the generation of convincing future events, then repeated imagination of those events should mitigate age differences. However, we found that repeated imagination of positive future events did not alter the memory bias in older adults, suggesting an alternative age-related mechanism protecting against the interference of future thinking in memory. Further research examines the extent to which the memory bias extends to domains beyond emotional future thinking in younger and older adults.

Most studies of autobiographical memory (AM) instruct participants to recall specific, one-off events from a particular time period. Results on ageing show that older adults recall fewer memories and report lower rates of direct retrieval (i.e., memories popping into mind) than younger adults. However, this negative age effect disappeared in a recent study when participants could freely recall AMs without specificity and temporal restrictions. The present investigation examined the effects of age and instructions on directly and generatively recalled AMs using a standard word-cue paradigm. Forty-eight younger (18–35) and 48 older (65+) adults recalled AMs online (via Prolific) under two different instruction conditions: recall any memory versus recall only specific memories older than one week (free vs. restricted instructions, respectively). Preliminary analysis is ongoing, but we predict that restricted instructions will reduce direct retrieval, especially in older adults. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings will be discussed.