Collaborative remembering in older adults: Age-invariant outcomes in the context of episodic recall deficits

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Abstract

Rapidly growing research reveals complex yet systematic consequences of collaboration on memory in young adults, but much less is known about this phenomenon in older adults. Young and older adults studied a list of categorized words and took three successive recall tests. Test 1 and 3 were always taken individually, and Test 2 was done either in triads or alone. Despite older adults recalling less overall than young adults, both age groups exhibited similar costs and benefits of collaboration: Collaboration reduced both correct and false recall during collaborative remembering, was associated with more positive beliefs about its value, and produced reminiscence, collective memory, and some forgetting in its cascading effects on postcollaborative recall. We examine the role of retrieval organization in these effects. As environmental support may play a substantial role in healthy aging, the relatively preserved effects of collaboration on memory in older adults hold promise for testing judicious uses of group remembering in aging. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Comments

Copyright 2011 American Psychological Association

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Publication Title

Psychology and Aging

Published Citation

Henkel, L. A., & Rajaram, S. (2011). Collaborative remembering in older adults: Age-invariant outcomes in the context of episodic recall deficits. Psychology and Aging, 26(3), 532. doi:10.1037/a0023106.

DOI

10.1037/a0023106

Peer Reviewed

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