Listener age affects age-related differences in the episodic specificity and flexibility of autobiographical recollection

When recalling events from the personal past, older adults typically produce fewer episodic details than younger adults. However, this pattern is often assessed in interview-style studies in which participants recall events to younger adult experimenters, raising the possibility that the older adults shape autobiographical recall to accommodate the knowledge of a younger listener. Here, we investigated this question by having younger (n=76) and older adults (n=80) initially recall personal events with no audience in mind, before recalling these again to target listeners who were either younger or older adults. Notably, when the listener was an older adult, there was no age-related episodic memory decline. Moreover, although both groups downshifted episodic details when recalling to a different-aged listener, older adults also varied the similarity across their retellings and incorporated more listener-specific information at recall, indicating greater flexibility. These findings demonstrate how the social context can mitigate memory changes across the lifespan.