Research Article Age-Related Changes in the Episodic Simulation of Future Events

ABSTRACT—Episodic memory enables individuals to recol-lect past events as well as imagine possible future scenar-ios. Although the episodic specificity of past events declines as people grow older, it is unknown whether the same is true for future events. In an adapted version of the Auto-biographical Interview, young and older participants generated past and future events. Transcriptions were segmented into distinct details thatwere classified as either internal (episodic) or external. Older adults generated fewer internal details than younger adults for past events, a result replicating previous findings; more important, we show that this deficit extends to future events. Further-more, the number of internal details and the number of external details both showed correlations between past and future events. Finally, the number of internal details gen