I remember it like it was yesterday: Age-related differences in the subjective experience of remembering

Unexplored avenues: a narrative review of cognition and mood in postmenopausal African women with female genital circumcision/mutilation/cutting

Recent ageing research has projected the lifespan and proportion of postmenopausal women living in low- and middle-income countries to substantially increase over the years, especially on the African continent. An important subgroup within the African postmenopausal population is those with female genital circumcision/mutilation/cutting (FGC). Practised across 31 African nations, FGC holds cultural significance as it is deemed essential to marriage and successful womanhood. Perhaps because of this, most FGC studies have primarily focused on women's reproductive functioning and their mood experiences. These studies also usually exclude postmenopausal women from their cohorts. Consequently, cognition and age-related cognitive decline and preservation remain understudied. Therefore, we investigated what is known about mood and cognition in local and immigrant postmenopausal African women with FGC. To do this, we carried out a narrative review searching PubMed, PsycInfo, and Google Scholar databases. Boolean combinations of keywords related to FGC, cognition, ageing, and mood were used, with a focus on cognition and ageing-related terms. Only studies published in English, those that recruited African women with FGC aged 50 years and older, and those that investigated cognitive and/or mood-related experiences were included. Ten studies were found; these included quantitative, qualitative, and case reports. The age range of cohorts across included studies was 13-90 years; women who were likely postmenopausal formed a minority within the cohorts (4.5%-25%). There were no studies assessing memory or cognition beyond those looking at FGC-related memories, which were vivid, especially if women had type III FGC (Pharaonic) or were older at the time of FGC. Although most of these women reported experiencing negative emotions concerning FGC, quantitative reports showed that only a minority of women experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, or depression. Thus, there remains an urgent need to bring this understudied group into ageing and dementia research. Future research should adopt mixed-methods with culturally sensitive methodologies to investigate the lived experience of ageing as well as cognitive changes. A holistic understanding of ageing women from the Horn of Africa's experiences and needs will support an improvement in the quality of care delivered to this cohort in both local and immigrant contexts.

What is autonoetic consciousness? Examining what underlies subjective experience in memory and future thinking

Autonoetic consciousness is the awareness that an event we remember is one that we ourselves experienced. It is a defining feature of our subjective experience of remembering and imagining future events. Given its subjective nature, there is ongoing debate about how to measure it. Our goal was to develop a framework to identify cognitive markers of autonoetic consciousness. Across two studies (N = 342) we asked young, healthy participants to provide written descriptions of two autobiographical memories, two plausible future events, and an experimentally encoded video. Participants then rated their subjective experience during remembering and imagining. Exploratory Factor Analysis of this data uncovered the latent variables underlying autonoetic consciousness across these different events. In contrast to work that emphasizes the distinction between Remember and Know as being key to autonoetic consciousness, Re-experiencing, and Pre-experiencing for future events, were consistently identified as core markers of autonoetic consciousness. This was alongside Mental Time Travel in all types of memory events, but not for imagining the future. In addition, our factor analysis allows us to demonstrate directly - for the first time - the features of mental imagery associated with the sense of autonoetic consciousness in autobiographical memory; vivid, visual imagery from a first-person perspective. Finally, with regression analysis, the emergent factor structure of autonoetic consciousness was able to predict the richness of autobiographical memory texts, but not of episodic recall of the encoded video. This work provides a novel way to assess autonoetic consciousness, illustrates how autonoetic consciousness manifests differently in memory and imagination and defines the mental representations intrinsic to this process.

Integrity of autobiographical memory and episodic future thinking in older adults varies with cognitive functioning

Research has documented changes in autobiographical memory and episodic future thinking in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, cognitive decline occurs gradually and recent findings suggest that subtle alterations in autobiographical cognition may be evident earlier in the trajectory towards dementia, before AD-related symptoms emerge or a clinical diagnosis has been given. The current study used the Autobiographical Interview to examine the episodic and semantic content of autobiographical past and future events generated by older adults (N = 38) of varying cognitive functioning who were grouped into High (N = 20) and Low Cognition (N = 18) groups based on their Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores. Participants described 12 past and 12 future autobiographical events, and transcripts were scored to quantify the numbers of internal (episodic) or external (non-episodic, including semantic) details. Although the Low Cognition group exhibited a differential reduction for internal details comprising both past and future events, they did not show the expected overproduction of external details relative to the High Cognition group. Multilevel modelling demonstrated that on trials lower in episodic content, semantic content was significantly increased in both groups. Although suggestive of a compensatory mechanism, the magnitude of this inverse relationship did not differ across groups or interact with MoCA scores. This finding indicates that external detail production may be underpinned by mechanisms not affected by cognitive decline, such as narrative style and the ability to contextualize one's past and future events in relation to broader autobiographical knowledge.

Age-related reduction in anxiety and neural encoding of negative emotional memory

Introduction

Older adults experience less anxiety. We examined how memory of negative emotional images varied with age and may reflect age-related differences in anxiety.

Methods

Fifty-one adults, age 22-80 years, underwent imaging with a memory task where negative and neutral images were displayed pseudo-randomly. They were queried post-scan about the images inter-mixed with an equal number of images never displayed. Sensitivity (d') and reporting bias (Z-score of false alarm rate; Z[FAR]) were quantified with signal detection theory.

Results

Age was negatively correlated with both Spielberg State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) state score and d' (negative - neutral) and positively with Z[FAR] (negative - neutral). However, STAI score and d' or Z[FAR] (negative - neutral) were not significantly correlated. In whole-brain regression, STAI score was correlated with higher activity of the right middle/superior temporal gyri/temporal parietal junction (MTG/STG/TPJ) for "negative correct - incorrect" - "neutral correct - incorrect" trials. Further, the MTG/STG/TPJ activity (β) was also negatively correlated with age. Mediation analyses supported a complete mediation model of age → less anxiety → less MTG/STG/TPJ β.

Discussion

Together, the findings demonstrated age-related changes in negative emotional memory and how age-related reduction in anxiety is reflected in diminished temporoparietal cortical activities during encoding of negative emotional memory.

The effects of age on objective and subjective recollection after visiting a virtual apartment

While aging has been associated with decreased retrieval of episodic memory details, subjective ratings about memory quality seem to remain stable. This suggests that subjective memory judgments are based on different information according to age. Here, we tested the hypothesis that older people would rather base their subjective judgments on the retrieval of personal elements (such as emotions and thoughts), whereas younger people would rather base their judgments on the retrieval of event-related elements (such as time, place, and perceptual details). Sixty participants (20 to 79 years old) performed eight actions in a virtual apartment and were then asked to verbally recall each action with a maximum of associated elements and to rate the subjective quality of their memories. The elements reported were classified into "person-related" and "event-related" categories. Executive functions, memory performance on traditional memory tasks, and subjects' perception of memory functioning were also evaluated. Results revealed that aging was associated with reduced retrieval of event-related elements, which was explained by decreasing executive resources. However, age did not affect the retrieval of person-related elements, and the subjective memory judgments of older people were not based on these elements to a greater extent than those of younger people. Finally, our results highlight the value of virtual reality (VR) in memory evaluations since subjects' perception of memory functioning was associated with their performance in the VR task but not in traditional memory tasks.

Dissociations between directly and generatively retrieved autobiographical memories: evidence from ageing

Autobiographical memory research has largely focused on effortful, generative retrieval processes, particularly in cognitive ageing literature. However, recent evidence has shown that autobiographical memories are often retrieved directly, without effortful retrieval processes. In the present study, we examined the retrieval characteristics and the phenomenological qualities of directly and generatively retrieved memories in younger and older adults. Participants recalled autobiographical memories in response to word-cues and reported whether each of their memories was retrieved directly (i.e., memory popped into mind) or generatively (i.e., they actively searched for it), and provided ratings for several retrieval and phenomenological characteristics. Overall, directly retrieved autobiographical memories were recalled faster and with less effort, were more recent, more frequently rehearsed, more vivid, and more positive in valence than generatively retrieved memories. Importantly, while younger adults recalled a higher number of generatively retrieved autobiographical memories than older adults, there were no age effects on the number of directly retrieved memories. We also established the parallel-form reliability of the word-cue method in eliciting autobiographical memories by comparing two sets of word-cues. The results provide novel insights on the dissociable effects of retrieval type and ageing on autobiographical memories. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

How well do you think you remember your personal past? French validation of the Autobiographical Recollection Test (ART) and exploration of age effect

ABSTRACTThis study aimed to validate a French version of the Autobiographical Recollection Test (ART), a 21-item self-report questionnaire developed by (Berntsen, D., Hoyle, R. H., & Rubin, D. C. (2019). The Autobiographical Recollection Test (ART): A measure of individual differences in autobiographical memory. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 8(3), 305-318). examining the subjective quality people attribute to their autobiographical memories. It measures seven distinct but correlated dimensions of memories' quality varying between individuals: vividness, narrative coherence, reliving, rehearsal, visual imagery, scene, and life-story relevance. 373 participants aged from 18 to 87 years old were invited to complete the questionnaire by rating on a 7-point Likert scale the degree to which they agree with each item. Demographic data and information about their perception of their memory functioning and satisfaction were also collected. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the initial seven-factor structure of the ART. Moreover, results showed desirable psychometric properties, with good internal consistency (.94) and test-retest reliability (.83). This scale was also correlated with participants' perception of memory functioning in daily life. However, there was no correlation with age, confirming prior studies showing that the subjective quality of autobiographical memories does not decline with age. This study thus provides proof of the good psychometric properties of the French version of the ART and promotes its use to explore the subjective quality of autobiographical memories in clinical populations.

Patterns of episodic content and specificity predicting subjective memory vividness

The ability to remember and internally represent events is often accompanied by a subjective sense of "vividness". Vividness measures are frequently used to evaluate the experience of remembering and imagining events, yet little research has considered the objective attributes of event memories that underlie this subjective judgment, and individual differences in this mapping. Here, we tested how the content and specificity of event memories support subjectively vivid recollection. Over three experiments, participants encoded events containing a theme word and three distinct elements - a person, a place, and an object. In a memory test, memory for event elements was assessed at two levels of specificity - semantic gist (names) and perceptual details (lure discrimination). We found a strong correspondence between memory vividness and memory for gist information that did not vary by which elements were contained in memory. There was a smaller, additive benefit of remembering specific perceptual details on vividness, which, in one study, was driven by memory for place details. Moreover, we found individual differences in the relationship between memory vividness and objective memory attributes primarily along the specificity dimension, such that one cluster of participants used perceptual detail to inform memory vividness whereas another cluster was more driven by gist information. Therefore, while gist memory appears to drive vividness on average, there were idiosyncrasies in this pattern across participants. When assessing subjective ratings of memory and imagination, research should consider how these ratings map onto objective memory attributes in the context of their study design and population.