The impact of age on the temporal compression of daily life events in episodic memory

While age differences in episodic memory are well documented, the impact of age on the structure of memories for real-world events has not been investigated in detail. Recent research has shown that the continuous flow of information that constitutes daily life events is compressed in episodic memory, such that the time needed to mentally replay an event is shorter than the actual event duration. To examine whether this process of temporal compression of prior experience in episodic memory is affected by aging, we asked young and older adults to engage in a series of events that simulated daily life activities while their experience was automatically recorded using a wearable camera. Subsequently, participants were asked to mentally replay these events in as much detail as possible and then to verbally report recalled contents and to rate the subjective qualities of their memories. Results revealed that the rates of temporal compression of events during mental replay were similar in young and older adults. In both age groups, rates of temporal compression were predicted by the density of recalled moments of prior experience per unit of time of the actual event duration. Interestingly, however, the number of recalled moments predicted the subjective vividness of memories in young but not in older adults. Taken together, these results suggest that the process of temporal compression of events in episodic memory is unaffected by age but that the subjective experience of memory vividness becomes less tied to recalled moments that represent the unfolding of events.