Emotional Causes and Consequences of Age Differences in Memory Specificity

 描述(申请人提供)：心理时间旅行(MTT)指的是在心理上模拟发生在现在以外的事件的能力，包括回忆过去的事件和想象未来的事件。通过将过去的经验与现在的感受和未来的意图联系起来，MTT被认为是一种独特的人类能力，在自我控制、情绪调节和决策方面发挥着至关重要的作用。这项拟议的研究测试了从一种新的四甲基偶氮唑盐与衰老模型中得出的假设。简而言之，该模型预测，随着年龄的增长，情节记忆的下降，加上调节情绪的动机的增加，导致老年人对过去和可能的未来事件进行叙事，这些事件的感觉和感知细节较少(情节较少)，但更具自我相关性和意义(更具语义)。这些意义丰富的叙事减少了当前的负面情绪体验，增加了积极情绪。将进行三个实验来验证这些假设。在每个实验中，年轻人和老年人都被要求描述在不同的指导下发生或可能发生在他们身上的事件。实验一将测试将人们的注意力集中在体验的感官和知觉细节上的指令是否会矛盾地导致更多的负面情绪。实验2将测试保持积极情绪的指令是否会导致更多基于语义的叙述。实验3将直接操纵情绪，以确定积极的情绪状态是否会导致所描述事件的间歇性减少。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Mental Time Travel (MTT) refers to the ability to mentally simulate events that occur in times other than the present, and encompasses both remembering past events and imagining future ones. MTT is thought to be a uniquely human ability that plays a crucial role in self-control, emotion regulation, and decision-making, by linkng past experience with current feelings and future intention. The proposed research tests hypotheses derived from a new model of MTT and aging. In brief, the model predicts that the declines in episodic memory with age, combined with increases in motivation to regulate emotion, result in older adults constructing narratives of past, and possible future, events that have less sensory and perceptual detail (less episodic), but are more self-relevant and meaningful (more semantic). These meaning-rich narratives then decrease the current experience of negative affect and increase positive affect. Three experiments will be conducted to test these hypotheses. In each experiment, younger and older adults will be asked to describe events that did or might happen to them under different sets of instructions. Experiment 1 will test whether instructions that focus people on sensory and perceptual details of experiences paradoxically cause more negative moods. Experiment 2 will test whether instructions to maintain a positive mood will cause more semantically-based narratives. Experiment 3 will directly manipulate mood to determine if positive mood states cause decreases in the episodic nature of the described events.