Episodic and semantic contributions to older adults' autobiographical recall

The authors examined episodic and semantic contributions to 2 salient features of older adults' autobiographical recall: the reminiscence bump and the retention effect. Forty well-educated and healthy older men (mean age = 72.5 years; SD = 1.1) recalled personal memories in response to a series of cue words. They also categorized each memory as something they remembered from the past (R response) or they knew had happened in the past (K response) and indicated their ages when each memory occurred. The authors assumed that R and K responses reflected the operation of the episodic and semantic memory systems, respectively. Results showed a reminiscence bump and a retention effect for both R and K responses. The authors discuss the implications of this finding concerning the purported bases of the reminiscence bump and the retention effect as well as the notion that aging is more likely to effect episodic memory than semantic memory.