Browsing by Author "Schulkind, MD"

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    A Study of Gender Differences in Autobiographical Memory: Broken Down by Age and Sex
    (Journal of Adult Development, 1999-12-01) Rubin, DC; Schulkind, MD; Rahhal, TA
    Data from 40 older adults who produced autobiographical memories to word cues and to the request to list five important memories, and data from 60 older adults who answered factual multiple-choice questions for events spread across their lives, were analyzed for gender differences. In spite of considerable statistical power, there were no gender differences in the distribution of autobiographical memories over the lifespan, in the distribution of important memories, in various ratings provided to these memories, or in the distribution of knowledge for events. The only gender difference found was that men performed better on factual questions about current events and baseball. Thus, counter to what might be expected from Darwinian theory and some behavioral data, gender differences were minimal.
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    Distribution of important and word-cued autobiographical memories in 20-, 35-, and 70-year-old adults.
    (Psychol Aging, 1997-09) Rubin, DC; Schulkind, MD
    For word-cued autobiographical memories, older adults had an increase, or bump, from the ages 10 to 30. All age groups had fewer memories from childhood than from other years and a power-function retention for memories from the most recent 10 years. There were no consistent differences in reaction times and rating scale responses across decades. Concrete words cued older memories, but no property of the cues predicted which memories would come from the bump. The 5 most important memories given by 20- and 35-year-old participants were distributed similarly to their word-cued memories, but those given by 70-year-old participants came mostly from the single 20-to-30 decade. No theory fully accounts for the bump.
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    Music, emotion, and autobiographical memory: they're playing your song.
    (Mem Cognit, 1999-11) Schulkind, MD; Hennis, LK; Rubin, DC
    Very long-term memory for popular music was investigated. Older and younger adults listened to 20-sec excerpts of popular songs drawn from across the 20th century. The subjects gave emotionality and preference ratings and tried to name the title, artist, and year of popularity for each excerpt. They also performed a cued memory test for the lyrics. The older adults' emotionality ratings were highest for songs from their youth; they remembered more about these songs, as well. However, the stimuli failed to cue many autobiographical memories of specific events. Further analyses revealed that the older adults were less likely than the younger adults to retrieve multiple attributes of a song together (i.e., title and artist) and that there was a significant positive correlation between emotion and memory, especially for the older adults. These results have implications for research on long-term memory, as well as on the relationship between emotion and memory.
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    Properties of word cues for autobiographical memory.
    (Psychol Rep, 1997-08) Rubin, DC; Schulkind, MD
    A sample of 124 words were used to cue autobiographical memories in 120 adults varying in age from 20 to 73 years. Individual words reliably cued autobiographical memories of different ages with different speeds. For all age groups, words rated high in imagery produced older memories and faster reaction times.
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    The distribution of autobiographical memories across the lifespan.
    (Mem Cognit, 1997-11) Rubin, DC; Schulkind, MD
    Words were used to cue autobiographical memories from 20- and 70-year-old subjects. Both groups showed a decrease in memories from the childhood years and a power-function retention function for their most recent 10 years. Older subjects also had an increase in the number of memories from the ages 10 to 30. These results held for individual subjects as well as grouped data and held when either 124 or 921 memories were cued. Reaction times to produce memories were constant across decades except for childhood where they were longer.