Event Tagging: A Novel Intervention to Remediate Age Differences in Episodic Memory

We experience the world as a continuous flow of information, but segment it into discreteevents in long-term memory. Poorer memory has been related to less distinct events, particularlyin older adults. Here, we test an intervention aimed at improving event memory in older adultsby making boundaries more distinct and reinforcing within-event associations using a largeonline sample of younger (N=181) and older (N=196) adults. Across age groups, memory for afilm is benefited by the ‘event-tagging’ intervention (generating keywords to summarize thepreceding scene) over a low-level control task and normal, continuous viewing. This benefit wasgreater for within- than between-event memory. The intervention benefited the number ofepisodic details recalled by a subset of participants (N=55 younger, 65 older) in a free recall task24 hours later. This suggests that our intervention may be helpful in reinforcing associationswithin events while maintaining distinct boundaries between them.