Independent Perspective News

By JOHN O'NEIL

Older people forget unpleasant images more quickly than positive ones, according to a study published yesterday.

By contrast, people under 30 recalled slightly more negative images on the same memory tests, the research found.

The lead author, Dr. Susan Turk Charles, a psychologist at the University of California at Irvine, said that research over the last decade had shown that stereotypes of older people as "depressed, lonely and anxious" were off base.

In fact, people over 65 tend to have more positive outlooks than younger people, at least until their late 80's, she said.

For the study, published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology, Dr. Charles showed groups of people of different ages a series of images considered positive, like a man and a boy at a beach, or negative, like a couple in a cemetery, or neutral.

After a short break, the subjects were then tested to see how many images they could describe, and how accurately they could pick previously viewed images from an array of pictures.

People younger than 30 recalled slightly more negative images than positive ones. People ages 65 to 80 recalled fewer images of all kinds, but remembered almost twice as many positive as negative images, the article said.

In a second study, Dr. Charles found that older and younger subjects alike spent more time examining the negative images, but that what stuck with the older subjects was still the positive images.

"Older people remember less of the negative aspects of their experiences than younger people," Dr. Charles said, "and perhaps not dwelling on the negative aspects of life is one reason that they look so healthy emotionally."