Abstract: Objective: To investigate whether the phenomenal experiencing characteristics of female adults’ episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) are influenced by age × time interaction. Methods: There were 95 participants in total, including 33 young (18-33 years old), 30 middle-aged (38-55 years old) and 32 older women (60-76 years old). Each of the participants was instructed to recollect one recent (during the last year) and one remote (in childhood) episodic event in a semi-structured interview, and was required to complete the Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (AMQ) following the recollection of each event. Results: The scores of most phenomenal experiencing features of recent memories were obviously higher than that of the remote memories, while age effect and age × life period interaction showed no significance. Middle-aged and older women experienced more positive emotion, and less negative emotion than young people in recent EAM. However no significant differences on childhood EAM were found among the three groups of participants. Conclusions: Compared to the young, the middle-aged and the old show no obvious disadvantages on autobiographical memories when focusing on phenomenal experiencing. Life period, rather than age, appears to evidently affect phenomenal experiencing characteristics of EAM, registering as stronger phenomenal feeling of recent EAM than that of childhood EAM. The middle-aged and the older women showed positive emotion bias compared with the young , but only on recent memories. This suggests that positive bias is affected by age × time (or life period).

Key words: age, life period, autobiographical memory, phenomenal experiencing, positive emotional bias

摘要： 目的：考察成年女性情景自传体记忆(EAM)的现象学体验是否受年龄和事件发生时间的影响。方法：95名老、中、青年女性被试详细回述童年及近一年的自传体事件各一件，并完成自传体记忆问卷。结果：所有被试在近期记忆的大多数体验得分上显著高于童年期记忆，年龄主效应及交互作用不显著。在近期记忆的情绪体验上，中、老年女性比青年女性更积极。结论：成年女性EAM的现象学体验受时间影响明显，受年龄影响不大；中、老年女性的EAM现象学体验表现出一定的积极情绪偏向。

关键词: 老化, 事件发生时间, 自传体记忆, 现象学体验, 积极情绪偏向