- Episodic (what did I eat for supper last night?)
- Source (who told me that I should see that new movie?)
- Flashbulb (where were you when President Kennedy was shot?)
- Semantic (fact information)
- Procedural ("after you learn to ride a bike, you never forget")
As people age, their storage room for memories doesn't fill up as though they have only so much capacity available. Instead, memory changes seem to center in how people encode memories for storage and then retrieve the memories they've stored. Distraction from a memory task, such as because of a phone call, impacts encoding ability more. Slower retrieval processing may make it harder to remember names or dates. Despite these subtle changes, most older people are still able to competently take in new information, encode it, store it in long-term memory, and retrieve it when needed.
Middle-aged folks may start to notice memory changes, but their sensitivity about such changes is worsened by society's constant comparison of everyone to the young as the pinnacle for mental ability. Researchers suggest that when identifying what is normal for a certain age, comparing yourself to healthy, age-matched peers is much more realistic and meaningful than comparing yourself to someone many years younger.