Age-related differences in episodic memory precision are robust across time of day, chronotype, and testing format

Abstract

Older adults typically exhibit reduced episodic memory precision, while maintaining relatively preserved retrieval success. However, little is known about whether these age-related differences are influenced by internal biological factors (e.g., chronotype) or external testing conditions (e.g., experiment format, time of day). To address this question, younger and older adults completed an object-location memory task online, either in the morning or evening, and either with or without video-based supervision. Memory performance was assessed using mean absolute error and Bayesian hierarchical mixture modelling, which dissociated memory precision (κ₁) from the probability of memory-based responding (θ₁). Immediate memory performance was high across age groups, irrespective of time of day. Greater encoding error predicted greater retrieval error, and participants tested in the video condition exhibited lower recall error and higher recognition performance than those tested without supervision. Consistent with prior studies, older adults exhibited reduced memory precision relative to younger adults, whereas retrieval success remained largely intact. However, Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling provided no evidence that time of day, experiment format, or their interactions with age influenced either memory precision or retrieval probability. Older adults reported stronger morning preferences than younger adults, and participants generally selected testing times that aligned with their chronotype. Nevertheless, alignment between chronotype and testing time did not modulate memory performance. The results indicate that age-related differences in episodic memory precision are robust across variations in testing context, including time of day, experiment format, and individual differences in chronotype. More broadly, the results support the feasibility of remote and unsupervised testing for memory precision research and suggest that chronotype and testing time are unlikely to be major sources of variability in immediate object-location memory performance.