The fate of old memories

A questionnaire relating to past events, and a well-known faces recognition test, were devised to provide an objective and quantitative assessment of recent and remote memories. Normal subjects aged from 40 to 89 were tested on recall and recognition versions of each test. It was found that performance declined with increasing age for all time periods sampled. No evidence was obtained to support the widely held belief that memory is inversely related to the remoteness of event in older subjects.