What happens if you retest autobiographical memory 10 years on?

Burt (1992a, 1992b) reported data on the autobiographical memory of diarist s for events that had occurred on average 3.3 years earlier. This paper rep orts data on 11 of the diarists, who were recontacted after a further 10 ye ars and who agreed to a retest of their memory. Estimates of event date and event duration from the two recall attempts were compared. As predicted, d uration estimation was extremely stable and showed no detrimental effects o f the additional 10 years of retention interval. Estimation of event date w as predicted to show an increase in forward telescoping due to the increase d remoteness of the event sample, but, contrary to this prediction, backwar d telescoping dominated dating errors. A combination of the establishment o f a recent boundary and Kemp's (1999) associative model of dating is propos ed as an explanation for these results. It is argued that the nature of dat ing errors may depend on the time of the event's occurrence in the life spa n and the age of the individual dating the events.