Effect of Loneliness on Older Adults’ Autobiographical Memory Retrieval

Past evidence suggests that loneliness can have considerable cognitive consequences – such as impairments in overall executive function – but the full impact of these effects is still being investigated. One process that may be disrupted by loneliness is autobiographical memory, or the ability to remember events from one’s own personal past. The current study investigated whether loneliness was associated with reductions in memory specificity and episodic detail, with a focus on how these changes may be greater in older adults relative to young adults due to well-documented age-related declines in memory specificity. In two separate studies, participants were asked to retrieve autobiographical memories that were scored for the number of internal (contextually or temporally specific) and external (semantic or generic) details. Participants also completed the Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ), a measure of the severity of social isolation that a participant is experiencing in daily life. In Study 1, older adults with higher community integration scores included more internal details and fewer external details in their memory narratives; young adults did not show this pattern. In Study 2, older adults reported significantly more details overall, and had greater memory specificity compared to young adults. This unexpected age-related increase in memory specificity may have been related to young adults’ greater reported loneliness and depression in this sample. Together, these two studies demonstrate that community integration can impact autobiographical memory retrieval, and that both young and older adults may be vulnerable to cognitive changes due to loneliness.