Autobiographical Memory and Aging in Bilingual and Monolingual Hispanics

Abstract

Background: Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) may be particularly sensitive to age-related cognitive decline and risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Virtually nothing is known about EAM specificity in Hispanic individuals. Bilingualism is a cognitive factor that may influence EAM specificity among Hispanics. Bilingualism is thought to affect executive functions, particularly inhibition, which may influence the types of details generated while recalling EAMs. The present study aimed to 1) examine if EAM is sensitive to age in Hispanics, 2) reveal whether bilingualism influences EAM specificity in Hispanics, and 3) explore the influence of inhibition on EAM specificity in this population. Methods: A sample of 150 young and middle-aged/older adults (50 English-Spanish bilingual Hispanics; 50 monolingual English-speaking Hispanics; 50 monolingual English speaking Non-Hispanic Whites) narrated EAMs using the established Autobiographical Interview (Levine et al., 2002). Using the scoring protocol of the Autobiographical Interview, we evaluated the narratives for episodic and non-episodic detail. Bilingual and monolingual Hispanics completed a computerized version of the color-world inhibition “Stroop” test. Results: We were able to replicate the often-found age-related reduction in episodic detail generation in Hispanics. Bilingual Hispanics’ memories were more episodically specific relative to monolingual Hispanics and monolingual Non-Hispanic Whites. We also found that, among bilingual Hispanics, the language used at encoding versus language used at memory retrieval was not associated with episodic specificity. Lastly, we found that episodic specificity did not predict performance on an inhibition task and that middle-aged/older bilingual Hispanics had worse inhibition overall. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that episodic autobiographical memory is sensitive to age and bilingualism in Hispanics, making it a culturally appropriate cognitive measure among this population.