How retellings shape younger and older adults' memories

The way a story is retold influences the way it is later remembered; after retelling an event in a biased manner, people subsequently remember the event in line with their distorted retelling. This study tested the hypothesis that this should be especially true for older adults. To test this, older and younger adults retold a story to be entertaining, to be accurate, or did not complete an initial retelling. Later, all participants recalled the story as accurately as possible. On this final test, younger adults were unaffected by how they had previously retold the story. In contrast, older adults had better memory for the story's content and structure if they had previously retold the story accurately. Furthermore, for older adults, greater usage of story-telling language during the retelling was associated with lower subsequent recall. In summary, retellings exerted a greater effect on memory in older, compared with younger, adults.