Older Adults’ Episodic Memory Of “What,” “Where,” And “When”

The decline of episodic memory is a significant feature of cognitive aging that affects the daily life quality of older adults.Episodic memory can be categorized into three types of memory: what,where,and when(WWW memory).Previous studies have mostly focused on exploring the effects of aging on a single type of memory within the WWW framework,with relatively few studies investigating all three types of memory concurrently.Furthermore,by considering the positive bias in emotional regulation in older adults,this study aims to investigate the impact and mechanisms of emotional valence on WWW memory in older adults using natural stimuli in a laboratory setting.The study consists of three experiments: Experiment 1examines the differences in retrospective WWW memory between older and younger adults and the moderating role of emotional valence;Experiment 2 uses natural stimuli to investigate age-related changes in the three types of memory within the WWW paradigm and the modulating effect of emotions,where emotional stimuli serve as memory cues;Experiment 3 employs the same paradigm as Experiment 2,but with emotional stimuli presented as background stimuli to further investigate the role of emotions in WWW memory in older adults.Experimental paradigm one utilized the retrospective memory paradigm to prompt both older and young individuals to recall past hot social events,including positive,negative,and neutral events,based on the WWW elements.The results of the study revealed that,in terms of vividness,older individuals displayed significantly higher levels of vividness when recalling positive events as compared to neutral and negative events.In contrast,young individuals demonstrated higher levels of vividness for emotional events,including both positive and negative events,as compared to neutral events.Regarding specificity,older individuals scored significantly higher on the specificity of positive events for the where and when categories,as compared to neutral and negative events.In contrast,young individuals scored higher on the specificity of negative events for all three categories--what,where and when--as compared to neutral and positive events.In terms of accuracy,the study found significant age differences only in the when memory category.These findings suggest that changes in older individuals’ retrospective WWW memory are moderated by emotional valence,manifested by a positive emotional bias in both vividness and specificity dimensions,while emotional valence does not affect the accuracy of event recall.Experimental paradigm two utilized natural stimuli,prompting participants to watch a neutral daily life video in a laboratory environment,with emotional images(positive vs.neutral vs.negative)randomly inserted into the video,followed by an examination of the participants’ WWW memory.The results of the study revealed an interactive effect between age and emotional valence on WWW memory: for the task of what,older individuals demonstrated significantly better memory performance for emotional images(positive and negative)as compared to neutral images,while young individuals demonstrated better memory performance for negative emotional images as compared to neutral and positive images.For the task of where,older individuals demonstrated better memory performance for the location of positive images,while young individuals did not show significant emotional differences.For the task of when,older individuals demonstrated significantly larger temporal deviation for negative images as compared to neutral and positive images,while young individuals demonstrated the largest temporal deviation for positive image memory.The findings suggest that age-related changes in WWW memory in older individuals are moderated by emotional valence,manifested as a positive emotional bias,specifically demonstrated by better memory performance for positive emotional stimuli in the what and where tasks,and smaller temporal deviation for positive emotional stimuli in the when task.Experiment three and experiment two used a similar paradigm of the WWW memory experiment,in which neutral images were inserted into natural video stimuli with emotional valence(positive vs.negative).The results showed an age and emotional valence interaction only in the "where" task,manifested as significantly better performance of older adults in the neutral stimulus position memory in positive video condition,whereas younger adults showed the opposite pattern,performing better in the negative video condition.The findings suggest that the impact of emotional information on the WWW memory of older adults is relatively small when it serves as a background stimulus,only moderating the memory of the "where" aspect,with a positive facilitating effect.In summary,this study examined changes in older adults’ WWW memories in response to natural stimuli and their modulation by emotion through three experiments.The results found that older adults showed an overall positive emotional bias for both retrospective and newly generated memories,but that this positive effect was influenced by different memory types.The location(where)task showed the most consistent agerelated positive bias across the three experiments,suggesting that positive emotions contribute to older adults’ memory for event-related scenes regardless of whether they are target or background stimuli.This study provides a good measurement tool for detecting situational memory in older adults,a method that is sensitive to changes in ageing,and is simple and inexpensive to administer without confounding verbal processing.The results of the study may provide directions for the development of future interventions based on elements of WWW memory.