Assessing remote memory with an improved public events questionnaire

In the present research, public events recall and recognition tests were developed that appear to be psychometrically stronger than those used in the past. Following test construction, these tests were administered to older and middle-aged participants in order to examine the effects of chronological age and historical time period on memory for remote news events. Results indicated that middle-aged participants generally exhibited a better memory for news events than did older participants for the time periods that both age groups lived through. Across the life span, a common pattern was observed. Specifically, there was an increase in memory for events until the teenage years and fairly constant performance thereafter for both age groups. From these findings, we can clearly argue against a loss theory of remote memory. Some gender differences were observed on the recall and recognition tasks, but they were not as global or as frequent as Botwinick and Storandt (1980) suggested. The clinical potential of the remote memory tests is briefly considered.