Interpersonal memory monitoring in aging: Memory fidelity judgments regarding autobiographical narratives of other persons

In interpersonal communication, people monitor other people’s memory to judge its credibility. We assessed whether the quality of the recollection of past events influenced how individuals rated the fidelity of others’ memory and whether this is influenced by aging. 60 younger and 60 older participants listened to two types of autobiographical memories narrated by another person: either rich recollections or general memories. After each narrative, they rated how much they think the person has a faithful memory of what happened. The results showed that participants from both groups judged memories to more closely match what really happened when the memories contained many specific details. Older participants had globally higher memory fidelity ratings, but they showed the same effect of level of details as younger participants. This suggests that the quality of recollection in autobiographical memory influences interpersonal memory monitoring, whatever the age of the listener.