Scientists help older adults boost their memory

Distraction can actually help older adults overcome age-related forgetfulness and boost their memory to that of younger adults, according to a new study.
Scientists at Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research Institute (RRI) and the University of Toronto's Psychology Department have found compelling evidence that older adults can eliminate forgetfulness and perform as well as younger adults on memory tests.
"Older brains may be be doing something very adaptive with distraction to compensate for weakening memory," said Rene Biss, lead investigator said.
"In our study we asked whether distraction can be used to foster memory-boosting rehearsal for older adults. The answer is yes!"

"To eliminate age-related forgetfulness across three consecutive memory experiments and help older adults perform like younger adults is dramatic and to our knowledge a totally unique finding," lead author Lynn Hasher said.
"Poor regulation of attention by older adults may actually have some benefits for memory."

The findings, published online in Psychological Science, have intriguing implications for designing learning strategies for the mature, older student and equipping senior-housing with relevant visual distraction cues throughout the living environment that would serve as rehearsal opportunities to remember things like an upcoming appointment or medications to take, even if the cues aren't consciously paid attention to.

In three experiments, healthy younger adults recruited from the University of Toronto, aged between 17 to 27, and healthy older adults from the community, aged 60 and 78, were asked to study and recall a list of words after a short delay and again, on a surprise test, after a 15-minute delay.
During the delay period, half of the studied words occurred again as distraction while people were doing a very simple attention task on pictures.
Although repeating words as distracters had no impact on the memory performance of young adults, it boosted older adults' memory for those words by 30 per cent relative to words that had not repeated as distraction.

"Our findings point to exciting possibilities for using strategically-placed relevant distraction as memory aids for older adults � whether it's in classroom, at home or in a long term care environment," Biss said.