{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/6gcyv","title":"Beyond who, what, and where: Advanced older age is associated with a drop in the narrative elaborateness of autobiographical events","abstract":"Humans can mentally create and elaborately describe events, detailing not just the who, what, and where, but also the connections and intricacies of these elements. Propositional density, the number of propositions expressed relative to total words, can be leveraged to assess how elaborately the elements of memories are described. The present study used propositional density to investigate how age relates to the elaborateness of orally shared autobiographical event memories. This preregistered study included 114 young adults (mean age = 24.1) and 171 cognitively normal older adults (mean age = 68.3). Propositional density scores were calculated using Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater (CPIDR). In addition to conducting a young versus older adult comparison, we separated older adults into “younger-old” and “older-old” groups and compared propositional density scores for these groups and the young adult group. Propositional density was higher in young adults than older adults, Cohen’s f = 0.13, p = .029, which was driven by propositional density being significantly higher in young adults than older-old adults, Cohen’s f = 0.15, p = .027. No other significant group differences were found. In a sample of older adults, propositional density scores on past- and future-oriented tasks were significantly correlated, ρ = .43, p < .001. In advanced older age, many individuals may display lower propositional density in spoken autobiographical event memories, possibly reflecting that the elements of memories are less elaborately described in this population.","journal":null,"year":2024,"id":507310,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9605,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1359200,"name":"Janice A. Hayhoe","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1359201,"name":"Darcey Lynn","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1359202,"name":"C. D. Cochran","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1359203,"name":"Jonas Klus","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":911498,"name":"Mónica C. Acevedo-Molina","orcid":"0000-0003-3835-0391","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1137515,"name":"Valeria Pfeifer","orcid":"0000-0003-1252-5050","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1358918,"name":"Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna","orcid":"0000-0003-2565-4759","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":418538,"name":"Matthias R. Mehl","orcid":"0000-0003-2698-5007","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":328213,"name":"Matthew D Grilli","orcid":"0000-0003-0089-3243","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1359199,"name":"Danny Eric Cohen","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:11:02.460057Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}