How autobiographical memories can support episodic recall: transfer and maintenance effect of memory training with old-old low-autonomy adults.

Background And Aims: A large body of research has demonstrated that, although specific memory activities can enhance the memory performance of healthy older adults, the extent of the increment is negatively associated with age. Conversely, few studies have examined the case of healthy elderly people not living alone. This study has two mains goals: to understand whether older adults with limited autonomy can benefit from activities devoted to increasing their episodic memory performance, and to test the efficacy of a memory training program based on autobiographical memories, in terms of transfer and maintenance effect. We postulated that being able to rely on stable autobiographical memories (intrinsically associated with emotions) would be a valuable memory aid.

Methods: Memory training was given to healthy older adults (aged 75-85) living in a retirement home. Two programs were compared: in the first, participants were primed to recall autobiographical memories around certain themes, and then to complete a set of episodic memory tasks (experimental group); in the second, participants were only given the episodic tasks (control group).

Results: Both groups improved their performance from pre- to post-test. However, the experimental group reported a greater feeling of well-being after the training, and maintained the training gains relating to episodic performance after three months.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that specific memory activities are beneficial to elderly people living in a retirement home context. In addition, training based on reactivation of autobiographical memories is shown to produce a long-lasting effect on memory performance.