The effects of aging and an episodic specificity induction on spontaneous task-unrelated thought.

ABSTRACT: When voluntarily describing their past or future, older adults typically show a reduction in episodic specificity (e.g., including fewer details reflecting a specific event, time and/or place). However, aging has less impact on other types of tasks that place minimal demands on strategic retrieval such as spontaneous thoughts. In the current study, we investigated age-related differences in the episodic specificity of spontaneous thoughts using experimenter-based coding of thought descriptions. Additionally, we tested whether an episodic specificity induction, which increases episodic detail during deliberate retrieval of events in young and older adults, has the same effect under spontaneous retrieval. Twenty-four younger and 24 healthy older adults performed two counterbalanced sessions

SUBMITTER: Jordao M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7416953 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature