Episodic foresight and aging

Decline in episodic memory is one of the most prominent cognitive deficits seen in late adulthood. It is therefore surprising that few studies have examined how the related capacity for episodic foresight might also be affected in this age group. Preliminary evidence suggests that older adults show deficits in generating phenomenological characteristics of future events, but the critical question of whether such deficits extend to generating and executing appropriate future intentions remains to be addressed. Here, we present 2 studies. In Study 1, we report the results of our pilot testing, which was used to develop and validate stimuli for the first measure of this construct that is appropriate for use in adult populations. In Study 2, we administer this measure to 40 older and 40 younger adults. The results indicate that, relative to their younger counterparts, older adults are less likely to spontaneously acquire items that would later allow a problem to be solved, and are also less likely to subsequently use these items to solve the problems. These data provide important initial evidence that the capacity to apply episodic foresight in a functionally adaptive way is impaired in late adulthood. The results also provide important validation data for a novel measure of episodic foresight that has potential application to many other groups, including clinical groups known to have difficulties anticipating and planning for the future.