Aging shifts recall of naturalistic events from temporal to topic organization.

Abstract

Aging impacts episodic memories, including the way they are organized. Younger adults often organize items based on temporal context, whereas older adults show greater reliance on semantic relationships. Given that these findings are largely derived from studies using word-lists, an important question remains: Do these phenomena extend to complex, real-world memories that consists of meaningfully connected events? Here, we tested whether younger and older adults differ in the extent to which they organize recall by temporal or topic structure using a naturalistic stimulus. Older (N = 36) and younger (N = 46) participants viewed and recalled an episode of a "slice-of-life" television sitcom. We applied list-learning analysis techniques (e.g., lag-conditional response probabilities, temporal clustering, and topic clustering scores) to examine age differences in recall organization. Our results revealed that younger adults showed greater reliance on temporal structure, whereas older adults exhibited increased topic-based clustering. Older adults also showed diminished forward asymmetry even within shared topics, suggesting a broader shift away from fine-grained temporal structure. Despite these organizational differences, overall recall performance did not differ between groups. However, temporal organization was associated with better recall performance across age groups. In addition, we found that events with more causal connections were recalled more than events with fewer causal connections across age groups, demonstrating the critical role of narrative structure in supporting memory retrieval. Together, our results demonstrate that aging shifts the principles underlying memory organization, and highlight the utility of naturalistic paradigms in revealing subtle changes in memory processes across the lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).