Age-related changes in the subjective and objective detail of memory and imagination

Aging is associated with reduced episodic detail when remembering and imagining life events, at least when measuring detail objectively. But self-reported, or subjective, ratings of event vividness often increase with age. Moreover, the relationship between objective and subjective measures of detail deteriorates with age, in that events containing more episodic detail are not necessarily rated as more vivid. The present study tests a possible reason for this disconnect: Older adults rely more on nonepisodic content, such as semantic detail, when making vividness ratings. We examined age-related changes in the relationship between event content and vividness judgements when retrieving autobiographical memories, and when imagining past and future events. Both younger and older adults considered events containing more episodic detail to be more vivid. For memories and imagined past events, this effect was stronger for younger than older adults, but the relationship reversed for future events. Contrary to hypotheses, younger adults judged events with more personal semantic detail as being more vivid, while older adults did not. Notably, there was no age-related decrease in the overall amount of episodic detail produced, which could be due to the videoconference format of the interviews. While the breakdown in the relationship between objective and subjective memory with age does not seem to be due to differences in the event content assessed here, our results reveal important differences across past and future-oriented events. Moreover, although older adults typically generate more semantic detail overall, they are less likely to use this detail to support vivid (re-)experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).