Building Better Memories: The Dynamic Interplay of Social Information and Self-Referencing in Associative Memory Performance With Age

Abstract

Objective: Recent research has highlighted the potential of social information to mitigate age-related associative memory deficits, yet the influence of the self-reference effect remains a confounding factor. This study aimed to disentangle the effects of social information from self- or other-referencing on associative memory in young and older adults. Method: A total of 25 young adults and 25 older adults participated in our study. Participants encoded object–scene pairs using self- or other-referencing with scenes containing varying levels of social information (high, low, or none). Results: Results revealed that self-referencing improved recall for object–low social information pairs in both age groups, but older adults did not benefit similarly in object–no social information trials. For object–high social information pairs, other-referencing notably enhanced older adults’ associative memory performance compared to self-referencing. This interaction was particularly evident in older adults with low executive function. Conclusions: These findings suggest that tailoring encoding strategies based on the level of social information could potentially alleviate associative memory deficits, particularly in older adults with low executive function.