Autobiographical 8ll1ell1ory and aging

Because older adults have more life to remember, much of this work has been integrated into the study of cognitive aging. Here, I concentrate on how autobiographical memories are distributed over the lifespan, both be-cause it is one topic for which we have a good quantitative description and because clear differences exist in the availability of autobiographical memo-ri~es from different parts of the life span.;;0;c,,: lWois'suesl1e:ed to be mentioned briefly. The first is the accurary of tfie memories themselves. The second is the accuracy of the dates..H the ~_tobi()gtaphical memories people report from their life are mostly con-l~bulations, or if the dates given bear no direct relation to the actual dates, then the results reported here would be of little use for survey research