Post-event review in older and younger adults: improving memory accessibility of complex everyday events

Recalling an event at 1 time often increases the likelihood that it will be remembered at a still later time. The authors examined the degree to which older and younger adults' memory for everyday events that they watched on a videotape was improved by later seeing photographs or reading brief verbal descriptions of those events. Both older and younger adults recalled more events, in greater detail, with than without review. Verbal descriptions enhanced later recall to the same degree as reviewing photographs. Younger adults generally gained more from review than older adults on measures of the absolute number of details recalled and when facilitation was assessed relative to a no-review control condition, but not when memory for reviewed events was expressed as a proportion of each individual's total recall. Post-event review has clear potential practical benefits for improving memory of older adults.