Reminders can eliminate some age-related cognitive declines in prospective memory
If you or someone you love is experiencing age-related cognitive declines, you may be looking for ways to reduce prospective memory (PM) failures to maintain functional independence.
Unlike restrospective memory, which involves recalling previously learned information, prospective memory is our ability to remember to perform an action in the future. For seniors dealing with age-related cognitive decline, the latter is particularly important for maintaining autonomy. Tasks that require strong prospective memory might include going to a doctor’s appointment, paying the electric bill before its due date, or remembering to take medications several times a day.
A new study published in the journal Psychology and Aging has demonstrated the value of reminders to reduce prospective memory failures for healthy aging. The results show that simply offloading these PM demands—such as setting a reminder alarm to take medication—offers an effective way to mitigate these age-related declines.
The Research
A team of psychologists from University of Texas at Arlington and Arizona State University conducted two experiments to test prospective memory in younger and older adults. Participants in the two cohorts were charged with remembering tasks with and without the aid of reminders, sometimes with high-load conditions (more items to recall and low-load conditions (fewer items to recall).
• Experiment #1: Members of both cohorts were given tasks to remember (e.g., responding to certain words). Some participants were given on-screen reminders. Without reminders and under low load, participants did not demonstrate significant age-related decline in prospective memory. Under high load, the younger and older adults benefitted equally from using the reminders. These results suggest that people of any age can reduce cognitive strain simply by not requiring memory retrieval to be reliant on internal memory processes.
• Experiment #2: Members of both cohorts were given more complex, non-specific tasks. Rather than specific words, participants were required to recognize categories (e.g., fruits or animals). Under high memory load, the older adults experienced more difficulties remembering these tasks than the younger adults. However, when reminders were available, the age-related performance gaps were eliminated entirely.
Reminders improve intention fulfillment
According to the psychologists, the results suggest that the reason reminders are so effective for older adults stems from their increased tendency to check them more frequently when facing high cognitive demands. By compensating for age-related memory decline, older adults can still complete tasks that might otherwise be too much for their memory resources.
The study’s authors point to a variety of tools that can benefit older adults with declines in prospective memory, including hand-written to-do lists, smartphone apps, and personal assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa.
“This new study demonstrates that cognitive offloading, specifically using reminders like cell phone calendars, can effectively mitigate these declines,” says University of Texas Arlington Associate Professor of Psychology Hunter Ball, who served as lead author on the study. “While our study was conducted in a controlled setting, these findings can easily be applied in real-world environments to provide an easy and effective way to alleviate the burden of prospective memory challenges in older adults.”
MBJ
Wendy Burt-Thomas writes about the brain, mental health and parenting.
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