The Semantic Shift in Autobiographical Memory and Aging: Do Retrieval Goals Contribute to Age-Related Memory Differences?

Relative to young adults, cognitively healthy older adults typically include more semantic details when narrating remembered, personal events. This age difference in autobiographical memory is mostly interpreted in the literature as a sign of cognitive and brain decline, and the consequences are largely assumed to be negative. Complementing decline-based accounts, the current perspective builds on a recent proposal that developmental changes in memory-guiding motives may help shape how and why older adults reflect on their personal past (Grilli & Sheldon, 2022). We identify theoretical support and accumulating empirical evidence suggesting that young and older adults may pursue distinct goals when retrieving autobiographical memories. A closer examination of these goals raises the possibility that young adults’ goals may be especially well served by episodically specific memories, whereas older adults’ goals may be better aligned with semantic autobiographical knowledge. Although experimentally causal evidence remains limited and an important direction for future research, the reviewed literature identifies age-related changes in retrieval goals as a plausible contributor to the semantic shift and yields testable predictions for distinguishing this account from decline-based explanations.