Remembering Just the Good Times

Like fine wine and good cheese, the things we remember get better
with age, according to new research out of California. Older adults
recalled fewer negative images than younger adults in a study published
in the
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Knowing that older individuals tend to regulate their emotions more
effectively than do their younger counterparts, a group of psychologists
set out to see how memory affected this phenomenon.

They showed participants in three age groups--18-29, 41-53 and
65-80--three sets of images: positive, negative and neutral. Then they
tested the participants on their recall and recognition of the
images.

Older adults recalled and recognized fewer negative images relative
to positive and neutral ones. Both younger and older participants spent
more time viewing the negative images, but only the younger group
remembered them better.

These findings support the "socio-emotional selectivity" theory
that as people become more aware of their limited time they have left to
live, they direct their attention to positive thoughts and memories, says
lead researcher Susan Turk Charles, Ph.D., of the University of
California at Irvine.

"Older adults report they're not angry or upset when younger people
report that all the time. It's not because negative things don't happen
to older adults, it's that they're not dwelling on them," Charles
says.

Physiology may have also affected the older adults' positive
recall: research showed that the amygdala --which plays a significant
role in emotional behavior in older adults' brains--was activated equally
by positive and negative images, whereas younger adults' brains were
activated more by negative images.