Psychological Development and Education ›› 2018, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (3): 304-313.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2018.03.06

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Episodic Simulation of Past and Future Emotional Events in Older Adults: Evidence from an Autobiographical Interview Task

ZHOU Wenjia, SU Man, ZHOU Chu   

  1. Department of Psychology, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
  • Online:2018-05-15 Published:2018-05-15

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Abstract: People frequently re-experience past events and imagine specific events that might occur in their futures. Related studies regarding episodic future thinking mainly focus on young adults, a few studies in older adults show that they generate fewer internal (episodic) details and more external (semantic) details than do younger adults when remembering past events or imagining possible future events. But less is know whether older adults could show similar pattern during their remembering or imagining emotional events. Using the Autobiographical Interview task, the present experiment was conducted to examine how older adults and young adults generated internal details and external details when remembering and imagining emotional events. A 2(task type:remember past events vs. imagine future events)×3(emotional valence:positive, negative vs. neutral)×2(age:older adults vs. young adults) mixed design was used, which age was between-subject factor and the others were within-subject factors. Participants were 15 undergraduates and 13 older adults. The results showed that, (1) older adults generated fewer internal details and more external details than did younger adults when remembering past emotional events or imagining possible future emotional events. (2) Similar to young adults, older adults generated more details when they simulated positive future events, indicating their processing bias to positive information. (3) The rating of similarity between past events and future events given by older adults was higher than by young adults, which demonstrated that older adults depend mostly on their memories during the process of imagination. The results suggest that the age-related deficit in remembering the past and imagining the future can exist in the simulation of emotional events, which could provide strong evidence for the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis.

Key words: aging, episodic future thinking, emotion, autobiographical interview

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