AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY IN THE AGED

Women [44] with a mean age of 79.6 yr were required to respond to each of 20 common nouns with an episode from their lives. They were also asked to time tag each episode when it was elicited and again approximately, 1 wk later. In a 2nd experiment, 41 men and 17 women with mean ages of 72.5 and 83.2 yr served as subjects in a single session. In a 3rd experiment, 30 women with a mean age of 72.4 yr had response latencies recorded in the presence of each of the 20 nouns. In all 3 experiments frequency of memories for autobiographical events declined steadily from the 1st to the 3rd quarter of life and then showed some recovery for the last quarter. This was true for both men and women and latencies were invariant with quarters of the lifespan.