Levels of Specificity in Episodic Memory: Insights from Response Accuracy and Subjective Confidence Ratings in Older Adults and in Younger Adults under Full or Divided Attention

We propose that the specificity with which associations in episodic memory can be remembered varies on a continuum. In Experiment 1, we provide further evidence that older adults’ deficits in associative memory scale with the amount of specificity that needs to be retrieved. In Experiment 2, we address whether depleted attentional resources, simulated in young adults under divided attention at encoding, could account for older adults’ associative memory specificity deficits. Participants studied face-scene pairs and later completed an associative recognition test, with test pairs that were old, highly similar or less similar to old pairs, or completely dissimilar. Participants rated their confidence in their decisions. False positive recognition responses increased with the amount of specificity needed to be retrieved. Whereas older adults’ associative memory deficits scaled with how much specific information needed to be remembered, younger adults under divided attention had a more general deficit in associative memory. Confidence-accuracy analysis showed that participants were best able to calibrate their confidence when less specific information was needed to perform well. While divided attention young adults were generally prone to high-confidence errors, older adults’ high-confidence errors were most apparent when highly specific information needed to be remembered. These results provide further evidence for levels of specificity in episodic memory. Access to the most specific levels is most vulnerable to forgetting, in line with a specificity principle of memory (Surprenant & Neath, 2009). Further, depleted attentional resources at encoding cannot entirely explain older adults’ associative memory specificity deficits.