The distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan

Words were used to cue autobiographical memories from 20- and 70-year-old subjects. Both groups showed a decrease in memories from the childhood years and a power-function retention function for their most recent 10 years. Older subjects also had an increase in the number of memories from the ages 10 to 30. These results held for individual subjects as well as grouped data and held when either 124 or 921 memories were cued. Reaction times to produce memories were constant across decades except for childhood where they were longer.

[1]  Neal J. Cohen,et al.  Recall of remote episodic memory in amnesia , 1983, Neuropsychologia.

[2]  J. A. Robinson,et al.  Sampling autobiographical memory , 1976, Cognitive Psychology.

[3]  D C Rubin,et al.  Olfactory cuing of autobiographical memory. , 1984, The American journal of psychology.

[4]  H. F. Crovitz,et al.  Early Childhood Amnesia: A Quantitative Study With Implications for the Study of Retrograde Amnesia After Brain Injury , 1979, Cortex.

[5]  John R. Anderson,et al.  Reflections of the Environment in Memory Form of the Memory Functions , 2022 .

[6]  S. Larsen,et al.  Autobiographical memory in normal aging and primary degenerative dementia (dementia of Alzheimer type). , 1991, Journal of gerontology.

[7]  Jeffrey Dean Webster,et al.  Reminiscence and autobiographical memory: Complementary contexts for cognitive aging research. , 1993 .

[8]  J. Fitzgerald.  Remembering our past: Intersecting meanings of reminiscence in adult development and aging , 1996 .

[9]  D. Rubin.  Remembering our past : studies in autobiographical memory , 1996 .

[10]  Wayne A. Wickelgren,et al.  Age and storage dynamics in continuous recognition memory. , 1975 .

[11]  Amy Wenzel,et al.  One hundred years of forgetting: A quantitative description of retention , 1996 .

[12]  Katherine A. Benson,et al.  Socio-Historical Context and Autobiographical Memories: Variations in the Reminiscence Phenomenon , 1992 .

[13]  D T Hyland,et al.  Reminiscence and autobiographical memory in the study of the personal past. , 1988, Journal of gerontology.

[14]  D. Arenberg,et al.  Adult age differences in forgetting sentences. , 1993, Psychology and aging.

[15]  David C. Rubin,et al.  51 properties of 125 words: A unit analysis of verbal behavior , 1980 .

[16]  J. Wixted,et al.  On the Form of Forgetting , 1991 .

[17]  J. Cerella.  Information processing rates in the elderly. , 1985, Psychological bulletin.

[18]  D. Rubin,et al.  One Hundred Years of Forgetting : A Quantitative Description of Retention , 1996 .

[19]  R. Fivush,et al.  Knowing and remembering in young children , 1992 .

[20]  L. Squire.  Memory and Brain , 1987 .

[21]  L. Cermak,et al.  A case study of the forgetting of autobiographical knowledge: Implications for the study of retrograde amnesia. , 1986 .

[22]  Joseph M. Fitzgerald,et al.  Vivid Memories and the Reminiscence Phenomenon: The Role of a Self Narrative , 1988 .

[23]  K. Nelson.  The Psychological and Social Origins of Autobiographical Memory , 1993 .

[24]  S. Larsen,et al.  Autobiographical memory and life-history narratives in aging and dementia (Alzheimer type) , 1992 .

[25]  S. Larsen,et al.  Effects of late-onset depression and recovery on autobiographical memory. , 1995, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[26]  D. Holding,et al.  Personal Memories at Different Ages , 1977 .

[27]  D. Rubin,et al.  The Structure of Autobiographical Memory , 2019, Theories of Memory.

[28]  T. Salthouse,et al.  Aging associations: influence of speed on adult age differences in associative learning. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[29]  A. Paivio,et al.  Concreteness, imagery, and meaningfulness values for 925 nouns. , 1968, Journal of experimental psychology.

[30]  David C. Rubin,et al.  On the retention function for autobiographical memory , 1982 .

[31]  M. Conway.  Autobiographical Memory: An Introduction , 1990 .

[32]  Herbert F. Crovitz,et al.  Frequency of episodic memories as a function of their age , 1974 .

[33]  David C. Rubin,et al.  Autobiographical Memory , 2019, Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders.

[34]  A. Katz,et al.  Remote memory: recalling autobiographical and public events from across the lifespan. , 1992, Canadian journal of psychology.

[35]  E. Winograd,et al.  Relating age at encoding in early childhood to adult recall: Development of flashbulb memories. , 1983 .

[36]  Timothy A. Salthouse,et al.  Theoretical Perspectives on Cognitive Aging , 1991 .

[37]  G. Romanes.  Diseases of Memory; an Essay in the Positive Psychology , 1882, Nature.

[38]  J. Fitzgerald,et al.  Autobiographical memory across the life-span. , 1984, Journal of gerontology.

[39]  David C. Rubin,et al.  Autobiographical memory across the lifespan. , 1986 .

[40]  Dorothy Faulkner,et al.  Life span changes in autobiographical memory. , 1988 .

[41]  Willem A. Wagenaar,et al.  Theoretical perspectives on autobiographical memory , 1992 .

[42]  P. Rabbitt,et al.  What do old people remember? The Galton paradigm reconsidered. , 1988 .

[43]  R. Fivush,et al.  Autobiographical memory across the preschool years: Toward reconceptualizing childhood amnesia. , 1990 .

[44]  P. E. Morris,et al.  Practical aspects of memory : current research and issues , 1988 .

[45]  D. Holding,et al.  Date attribution, age, and the distribution of lifetime memories. , 1986, Journal of gerontology.

[46]  P. Rabinowitz.  Screen Memories , 1996 .

[47]  John A. Sweeney,et al.  Childhood amnesia: An empirical demonstration. , 1986 .