While younger people remember significant events in detail, older people recall more about thoughts, feelings and context.

While younger people remember significant events in detail, older people recall more about thoughts, feelings and context.
It's known that memory changes with age - some researchers believe that it deteriorates, others that we start to remember in a different way. Psychologists in Toronto have been comparing how people of different ages remember significant events, like their first kiss.

They studied a group of 15 younger adults, aged 19-34, and 15 older adults, aged 66-89. The younger group recalled more specific detail. But the older group recalled more about context, their thoughts and feelings. They were less good on supplying exact details, but produced more general factual information. The researchers think this may reflect differences in our values and roles in society as we age. It could be the effect of the intervening life experience that leads older people to express their memories differently. The researchers now want to study the possible age-related brain differences which may be linked to this evolution of memory.

Source

Psychology and Aging December 2002