Prospective Memory and Positivity Bias in the COVID-19 Health Crisis: The Effects of Aging.

This study aimed to determine whether the observed tendency to remember more positive than negative past events (positivity phenomena) also appears when recalling hypothetical events about the future. In this study, young, middle-aged, and older adults were presented with 28 statements about the future associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, half positive and half negative. In addition, half of these statements were endowed with personal implications while the other half had a more social connotations. Participants rated their agreement/disagreement with each statement and, after a distraction task, they recalled as many statements as possible. There was no difference in the agreement ratings between the three age groups, but the participants agreed with positive statements more than with negative ones and they identified more with statements of social content than of personal content. The younger and older individuals recalled more statements than the middle-aged people. More importantly, older participants recalled more positive than negative statements (positivity effect), and showed a greater tendency to turn negative statements into more positive or neutral ones (positivity bias). These findings showed that the positivity effect occurs in even such complex and situations as the present pandemic, especially in older adults. The results are discussed by reference to the notion of commission errors and false memories resulting from the activation of cognitive biases.

A new index of semantic short-term memory: Development and validation of the conceptual span task in Spanish.

Mounting evidence from both cognitive and neuropsychological research points to the importance of conceptual and lexical-semantic contributors to short-term memory performance. Nonetheless, a standardized and well-controlled measure to assess semantic short-term memory was only recently developed for English-speakers, and no parallel measure exists for Spanish-speakers. In the conceptual replication and extension reported here, we develop and validate a Spanish adaptation of the Conceptual Span task as a tool to measure the semantic component of short-term memory. Two versions of the task were validated, the Clustered and the Non-Clustered Conceptual Span task, both in separate samples of 64 and 105 Spanish-speaking university students. We found that both versions of the Conceptual Span task correlate well with another widely used standardized measure of working memory capacity, the Reading Span task. The two versions also correlated, as expected, with discrimination of linguistic congruency as assessed by a semantic anomaly judgment task. Clustered Conceptual Span remained a significant predictor of Reading Span when controlling for several additional cognitive variables, including fluid reasoning, text comprehension, verbal fluency, ideational fluency, and speed of processing. Our results present evidence that the Spanish adaptation of both versions of the Conceptual Span task can yield reliable estimates of the active maintenance of semantic representations in verbal working memory-an under-investigated ability that is involved in diverse domains such as episodic memory retrieval, language processing, and comprehension. Thus, the Conceptual Span task validated here can be employed to predict individual variation in semantic short-term memory capacity in a broad range of research domains.

Different bias mechanisms in recall and recognition of conceptual and perceptual information of an event / Diferentes mecanismos de los sesgos en el recuerdo y reconocimiento de información conceptual y perceptual de un evento

The aim of this research was to study the memory and response bias for conceptual and perceptual information in the recall and recognition of an event. The participants watched a movie trailer video and their memory of verbal and visual actions and details was evaluated using specific recall questions or a true/false recognition task. The participants recalled and recognized actions better than details, and visual information better than verbal information. Memory biases affected recall and recognition differently. The participants showed a high tendency to accept false verbal actions consistent with the gist of the event as true in the recognition task, while in the recall task the participants were more likely to answer incorrectly questions involving visual perceptual details. These results reflect the different mechanisms which are involved in the processing and cognitive management of conceptual and perceptual information of an event

El objetivo de esta investigación fue estudiar la memoria y sesgos de respuesta para información conceptual y perceptual en el recuerdo y reconocimiento de un evento. Los participantes vieron el video del tráiler de una película y se evaluó su memoria de las acciones y detalles, verbales y visuales, usando preguntas específicas en una tarea de recuerdo y frases con los mismos contenidos en una tarea de reconocimiento verdadero/falso. Los participantes recordaron y reconocieron mejor las acciones que los detalles y la información visual que la información verbal. Los sesgos de memoria afectaron de manera diferente al recuerdo y reconocimiento. Los participantes mostraron mayor tendencia a aceptar las acciones verbales falsas consistentes con la esencia del evento como verdaderas en la tarea de reconocimiento, mientras que en la tarea de recuerdo los participantes fueron más propensos a responder incorrectamente preguntas que implicaban detalles visuales. Estos resultados reflejan mecanismos diferentes implicados en el procesamiento y gestión cognitiva de la información conceptual y perceptual de un evento

Age-Based Positivity Effects in Imagining and Recalling Future Positive and Negative Autobiographical Events.

Thoughts about the future reflect personal goals, and projections into the future enrich our emotional life. Researchers have taken an interest in determining whether the tendency to remember more positive than negative emotional events observed when recalling past events also appears when remembering imagined future events. The objective of this study was to examine the age-based positivity effect of recall for future positive and negative autobiographical events in young and older adults. Representative future events were first established to develop the cues used to prompt personal future events. In the production task, the participants were presented with eight positive and eight negative random future events of young or older adults as a model and the corresponding cues to generate their own positive and negative future autobiographical events. In the recall task, the participants recovered as many experiences as they could of the model and the positive and negative events produced by themselves. The participants correctly recalled more positive than negative events and committed more errors for negative than positive events, showing a clear tendency in both young and older adults to recall future imagined events as positive. Regarding age, the young adults recalled more events than the older participants whilst the older participants in particular showed better recall of their own imagined future events than the model's events, and committed more errors when recalling the model's events than their own imagined events. Regarding the positivity effect in incorrect recall, more than half of the errors were valence changes, most of these being from negative to positive events, and these valence changes were more pronounced in the older than in the younger adults. In general, there were fewer differences between young and older adults in the recall of positive events in comparison with negative events. Our findings suggest that people are well disposed toward recalling positive imagined future events and preserve a positive emotional state, suppressing negative memories.

A matter of focus: Detailed memory in the intentional autobiographical recall of older and younger adults.

The intricately interwoven role of detailed autobiographical memory in our daily lives and in our imaginative envisioning of the future is increasingly recognized. But how is the detail-rich nature of autobiographical memory best assessed and, in particular, how can possible aging-related differences in autobiographical memory specificity be most effectively evaluated? This study examined whether a modified interview, involving fewer and time-matched events for older and younger adults, yielded age-related outcomes similar to those that have been previously reported. As in earlier studies, modest age-related changes in the specificity of autobiographical recall were observed, yet the largest most robust effect for both age groups was the substantial proportion of specific details retrieved. Both age groups rated recent memories as significantly less important and as less emotional than more temporally distant events. Our findings counter conceptions of older adults' autobiographical memories as invariably less episodically rich than those of younger adults.

Datos normativos para respuestas a categorías semánticas en castellano en adultos jóvenes y mayores / Normative data for responses to Spanish semantic categories in younger and older adults

Para analizar procesos cognitivos como la atención, la memoria y el lenguaje, es conveniente disponer de datos normativos de categorías semánticas. Sin embargo, existe poca investigación relacionada con la normalización de categorías en castellano en personas mayores, así como con las diferencias asociadas al proceso de envejecimiento en la producción de respuestas categoriales. El objetivo principal de este estudio consistió en recopilar en el mismo contexto temporal y sociocultural respuestas a 20 categorías semánticas en 285 adultos jóvenes y 272 personas mayores, quienes generaron el mayor número posible de respuestas en 30 segundos por categoría. Se calculó, para cada categoría, la frecuencia total y la media de producción de respuestas, el número de ejemplares diferentes producidos y el índice de semejanza entre las respuestas. Además, para cada ejemplar producido, se calculó para la muestra total y para cada grupo de edad el número de veces que se produjo cada ejemplar en total así como el primero de su categoría, y la medida en que ese ejemplar fue producido entre los primeros de su categoría. En la media de producción se encontraron diferencias significativas entre los adultos jóvenes y mayores en 15 categorías, con los jóvenes con una media superior en 11 categorías y las personas mayores en 4 categorías, diferencias que ponen de manifiesto la necesidad de utilizar datos normativos adecuados a cada grupo de edad. Este conjunto de normas categoriales está accesible en formato electrónico en la página de la revista y constituye un instrumento de trabajo válido para investigadores de distintos ámbitos como la psicología, la lingüística y la neuropsicología (AU)

In order to analyze cognitive processes like attention, memory or language, normative data for semantic categories is convenient. However, there is little research on normalization of Spanish categories in older adults or on differences related to aging process in the production of Spanish categorical responses. The principal aim of this study was to obtain in the same temporal, social and cultural context, the responses producedto 20 semantic categories by 285 younger and 272 older adults, who generated as many responses as they could within 30 seconds per category. For each category, the total frequency and the mean number of responses produced, as well as the number of different exemplars and the similarity index of responses given, was calculated. In addition, for each exemplar produced, the total frequency as well as the number of times it was given first in its category was calculated for the entire sample and separately for younger and older adults. There were age related differences in the mean production of 15 categories, with higher means for younger adults in 11 categories, and higher means for older adults in 4 categories, differences that show that normative data appropriate to each age-group is needed. These category-norms are available at the journal web site and might constitute a valid tool for researchersin various fields such as psychology, linguistics, andneuropsychology (AU)

Incidental memory of younger and older adults for objects encountered in a real world context.

Effects of context on the perception of, and incidental memory for, real-world objects have predominantly been investigated in younger individuals, under conditions involving a single static viewpoint. We examined the effects of prior object context and object familiarity on both older and younger adults' incidental memory for real objects encountered while they traversed a conference room. Recognition memory for context-typical and context-atypical objects was compared with a third group of unfamiliar objects that were not readily named and that had no strongly associated context. Both older and younger adults demonstrated a typicality effect, showing significantly lower 2-alternative-forced-choice recognition of context-typical than context-atypical objects; for these objects, the recognition of older adults either significantly exceeded, or numerically surpassed, that of younger adults. Testing-awareness elevated recognition but did not interact with age or with object type. Older adults showed significantly higher recognition for context-atypical objects than for unfamiliar objects that had no prior strongly associated context. The observation of a typicality effect in both age groups is consistent with preserved semantic schemata processing in aging. The incidental recognition advantage of older over younger adults for the context-typical and context-atypical objects may reflect aging-related differences in goal-related processing, with older adults under comparatively more novel circumstances being more likely to direct their attention to the external environment, or age-related differences in top-down effortful distraction regulation, with older individuals' attention more readily captured by salient objects in the environment. Older adults' reduced recognition of unfamiliar objects compared to context-atypical objects may reflect possible age differences in contextually driven expectancy violations. The latter finding underscores the theoretical and methodological value of including a third type of objects--that are comparatively neutral with respect to their contextual associations--to help differentiate between contextual integration effects (for schema-consistent objects) and expectancy violations (for schema-inconsistent objects).

Conceptual and perceptual encoding instructions differently affect event recall.

When recalling an event, people usually retrieve the main facts and a reduced proportion of specific details. The objective of this experiment was to study the effects of conceptually and perceptually driven encoding in the recall of conceptual and perceptual information of an event. The materials selected for the experiment were two movie trailers. To enhance the encoding instructions, after watching the first trailer participants answered conceptual or perceptual questions about the event, while a control group answered general knowledge questions. After watching the second trailer, all of the participants completed a closed-ended recall task consisting of conceptual and perceptual items. Conceptual information was better recalled than perceptual details and participants made more perceptual than conceptual commission errors. Conceptually driven processing enhanced the recall of conceptual information, while perceptually driven processing not only did not improve the recall of descriptive details, but also damaged the standard conceptual/perceptual recall relationship.

¿Quién hizo qué? Diferencias entre adultos jóvenes y mayores en la memoria para un atraco / Who did what? Differences between younger and older adults in memory for a robbery

La probabilidad de que una persona mayor tenga que declarar como testigo o víctima de un atraco o un suceso similar aumenta en función de la esperanza de vida de la población. Por ello, resulta relevante conocer si las personas mayores producen testimonios menos exactos que los jóvenes, así como determinar cuáles son las circunstancias en las que pueden ser más proclives a cometer errores. En este estudio utilizamos una prueba de reconocimiento para analizar la memoria para las acciones de un atraco en adultos jóvenes y mayores. Aunque no hubo diferencias en los aciertos, las personas mayores cometieron una proporción superior de falsas alarmas y resultaron menos exactas que los jóvenes en el reconocimiento de las acciones del suceso. Además, las personas mayores tuvieron más dificultades que los jóvenes a la hora determinar el autor de las acciones correctamente reconocidas como pertenecientes al atraco. Por lo tanto, los déficits de las personas mayores en el control del origen de la información que recuerdan podrían ayudar a explicar la menor exactitud de su memoria para el suceso, un hallazgo especialmente relevante al tomar declaración a una persona de edad avanzada

Due to the increased life expectancy of the older population, there is a growing probability for an elderly person to testify as an eyewitness or a victim of a robbery or a similar crime. However, little is known about aging effects on testimony accuracy and about circumstances in which older adults would be more prone to memory errors than younger adults. In this study older and younger adults' memory for actions of a robbery was examined with a recognition test. Although no differences were found in hits, the older adults had a higher proportion of false alarms and showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. In addition, the older adults were less able to attribute actions that occurred during the robbery to their correct sources. Thus, source-memory deficits may contribute to explain older adults’ less accurate recognition, a finding that should be taken into account in real-life eyewitness situations where an elderly person is involved

False recognition and source attribution for actions of an emotional event in older and younger adults.

In two experiments recognition of actions of a robbery presented in a video was examined in older and younger adults. In both experiments older adults had more false alarms and showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. In addition, when participants were asked in Experiment 1 to indicate Remember/Know/Guess judgments for actions they considered true, older adults accepted more false actions with Remember judgments. And when participants were asked in Experiment 2 to attribute the source (i.e., perpetrator), the older adults were less able to attribute actions that occurred during the robbery to their correct sources. Furthermore, we found a robust positive correlation between source attribution ability and recognition accuracy. Thus, source-memory deficits may contribute to older adults' false memories in real-life eyewitness situations.

Aging and flexible remembering: contributions of conceptual span, fluid intelligence, and frontal functioning.

Aging attenuates the capacity to adaptively and flexibly use episodic memory at different levels of specificity. Older and younger adults were tested on a picture recognition task that required them to make episodic memory decisions at an item-specific (verbatim) versus category-based (gist-based) level on randomly intermixed trials. Specificity modulation was assessed using a measure of the likelihood that participants retrieved verbatim information in order to reject test items that were categorically related to studied items under item-specific recognition instructions (recollection rejection). We found that this measure positively correlated with conceptual span (an index of short-term semantic memory) and with level of fluid intelligence in older and younger adults. However, when we simultaneously considered each of four possible contributors (age, conceptual span, fluid intelligence, and frontal function), the only significant predictor of recollection rejection was the composite fluid intelligence measure (assessed by the Culture Fair Intelligence Test [Cattell & Cattell, 1960] and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised Block Design subtest [Wechsler, 1981]). These findings suggest that interventions that facilitate adaptive specificity modulation in episodic memory may enhance the flexibility of thinking, and vice versa, in both older and younger adults.

Memory for actions of an event: older and younger adults compared.

Previous studies have shown increased false memory effects in older compared to younger adults. To investigate this phenomenon in event memory, in the present study, the authors presented younger and older adults with a robbery. A distinction was made between verbal and visual actions of the event, and recognition and subjective experience of retrieval (remember/know/guess judgments) were analyzed. Although there were no differences in hits, older adults accepted more false information as true and, consequently, showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. Moreover, older adults were more likely than younger adults to accompany these errors with remember judgments. Young adults accepted fewer false verbal actions than visual ones and awarded fewer remember judgments to their false alarms for verbal than for visual actions. Older adults, however, did not show this effect of type of information. These results suggest that aging is a relevant factor in memory for real-life eyewitness situations.