EPISODIC SPECIFICITY INDUCTION AND THE EFFECTS ON REMEMBERING AUTOBIOGRAPHICALS EVENTS

Abstract

The effects of using an episodic specificity induction before encoding of event memories in younger and older adults were explored. The research question is if an episodic specificity induction is presented before the encoding of complex events, will the induction affect how younger and older adults generate and encode details. Participants were randomly divided and counterbalanced into either the episodic specificity induction group or the general impression induction group. Participants were asked to recall an event they were personally involved in and were interviewed according to their randomly assigned induction condition. After completing this task, participants watched 14 short visually rich videos and were asked to recall 12 randomly selected videos after a short 10-minute filler task. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed by an independent research assistant. Data were coded for average number of details per video and types of details (internal vs external) generated. Data analysis used a 2 (group) x 2(detail type) ANOVA and a 2(group) x 5 (detail type) ANOVA. Results from this study were that the episodic specificity induction enhanced encoding of internal and external details for younger adults but not for older adults.