title: Centenarians' "holy" memory: is being positive enough?
abstract: The authors compared 18 centenarians' (M age = 100.1 years, SD = 1.8 years) recognition memory for emotional (positive, negative, and religious) pictures with 18 older adults (M age = 75.2 years, SD = 6.8 years). Participants observed a series of images that varied in emotional valence and meaning and were later asked to discriminate between old and new images in a series of pictures that included studied images as well as new images. Centenarians showed decreased recognition memory for positive and negative images items compared with older adults, F(1, 34) = 9.82, p < .01. In addition, a significant age by valence interaction was observed highlighting how centenarians remembered religious pictures better while older adults favoured positive information when only positive pictures were taken into consideration. Results are interpreted in terms of possible age-linked changes in meaningful goals that lead centenarians to focus on meaningful religious self-relevant information rather than simply on positive information.
authors.affiliation: University of Chieti, Psychological Sciences, Via dei Vestini 31, Chieti 66100, Italy. bfairfield@unich.it
authors.forename: Beth
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fairfield
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mammarella
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Di Domenico
mesh_terms: D000369:Aged, 80 and over / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009042:Motivation; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011594:Psychometrics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012016:Reference Values; D012069:Religion and Psychology