strategies older adults

Brain training reverses age-related cognitive decline

August, 2010

A month's training in sound discrimination reversed normal age-related cognitive decline in the auditory cortex in old rats.

A rat study demonstrates how specialized brain training can reverse many aspects of normal age-related cognitive decline in targeted areas. The month-long study involved daily hour-long sessions of intense auditory training targeted at the primary auditory cortex. The rats were rewarded for picking out the oddball note in a rapid sequence of six notes (five of them of the same pitch). The difference between the oddball note and the others became progressively smaller. After the training, aged rats showed substantial reversal of their previously degraded ability to process sound. Moreover, measures of neuron health in the auditory cortex had returned to nearly youthful levels.

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Training program improves eating skills of dementia patients

January, 2010

A study using two training programs to help dementia patients regain eating skills, found spaced retrieval training was particularly effective.

Loss of memory and problems with judgment in dementia patients can cause difficulties in relation to eating and nutrition; these problems in turn can lead to poor quality of life, pressure ulcers and infections. A study used two different step-by-step training programs to help dementia patients regain eating skills. Three institutions, involving 85 patients, were assigned to one of three programs: spaced retrieval training; Montessori-based training; control. Training consisted of three 30-40 min sessions per week, for 8 weeks. Both training programs resulted in significantly improved feeding skills, however the Montessori group needed more physical and verbal assistance. Nutritional status was significantly higher in the spaced-retrieval group compared to the control.

Reference: 

Lin, L., Huang, Y., Su, S., Watson, R., Tsai, B. W., & Wu, S. (2010). Using spaced retrieval and Montessori-based activities in improving eating ability for residents with dementia. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 9999(9999), n/a. doi: 10.1002/gps.2433.

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Older brains make good use of 'useless' information

January, 2010

A new study finds a decision-making advantage to the increased difficulty older brains have in filtering out irrelevant information.

It’s now well established that older brains tend to find it harder to filter out irrelevant information. But now a new study suggests that that isn’t all bad. The study compared the performance of 24 younger adults (17-29) and 24 older adults (60-73) on two memory tasks separated by a 10-minute break. In the first task, they were shown pictures overlapped by irrelevant words, told to ignore the words and concentrate on the pictures only, and to respond every time the same picture appeared twice in a row. The second task required them to remember how the pictures and words were paired together in the first task. The older adults showed a 30% advantage over younger adults in their memory for the preserved pairs. It’s suggested that older adults encode extraneous co-occurrences in the environment and transfer this knowledge to subsequent tasks, improving their ability to make decisions.

Reference: 

[276] Campbell, K. L., Hasher L., & Thomas R. C.
(2010).  Hyper-binding: a unique age effect.
Psychological Science: A Journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. 21(3), 399 - 405.

Full text available at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/01/15/0956797609359910.full

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Resistance training improves attention in older women

January, 2010

A study has found resistance training significantly improved selective attention and conflict resolution in older women, but balance and tone training did not.

A study involving 155 women aged 65-75 has found that those who participated in resistance training once or twice weekly for a year significantly improved their selective attention (maintaining mental focus) and conflict resolution (as well as muscular function of course!), compared to those who participated in twice-weekly balance and tone training. Performance on the Stroop test improved by 12.6% and 10.9% in the once-weekly and twice-weekly resistance training groups respectively, while it deteriorated by 0.5% in the balance and tone group. Improved attention and conflict resolution was also significantly associated with increased gait speed.

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Cognitive ability, not age, predicts risky decisions

July, 2010

A new study provides evidence that it's not age per se that affects the quality of decision-making, but individual differences in processing speed and memory.

A study involving 54 older adults (66-76) and 58 younger adults (18-35) challenges the idea that age itself causes people to become more risk-averse and to make poorer decisions. Analysis revealed that it is individual differences in processing speed and memory that affect decision quality, not age. The stereotype has arisen no doubt because more older people process slowly and have poorer memory. The finding points to the need to identify ways in which to present information that reduces the demand on memory or the need to process information very quickly, to enable those in need of such help (both young and old) to make the best choices. Self-knowledge also helps — recognizing if you need to take more time to make a decision.

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Stroke patients regain the power of speech by singing

March, 2010

People deprived of speech following a stroke were taught to sing words instead of speaking them in a technique known as 'melodic intonation therapy'.

And in another pilot study, people deprived of speech following a stroke were taught to sing words instead of speaking them in a technique known as 'melodic intonation therapy'. Brain scans also showed functional and structural changes in the undamaged hemisphere after they had received the therapy. Doctors are now testing the therapy in 30 stroke patients to assess how many people who lose their speech after a stroke would benefit.

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The findings were reported at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego.

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Age differences in the allocation of study time

Journal Article: 

Dunlosky, J. & Connor, L.T. (1997). Age differences in the allocation of study time account for age differences in memory performance. Memory and Cognition, 25, 691-700.

  • It is well-established that older adults commonly need to practice more than younger adults to achieve the same level of performance.
  • It may be that such age deficits in remembering are at least partly due to poorer monitoring of their learning.

It has been well-established that, compared to younger adults, older adults require more practice to achieve the same level of performance1. Sometimes, indeed, they may need twice as much2.

In the present study, two groups of adult subjects were given paired items to learn during multiple study-test trials. During each trial items were presented at the subject's pace. Afterwards the subjects were asked to judge how likely they were to be able to recall each item in a test.

It was found that people were very good at accurately judging the likelihood of their correct recall. Correlations between judgments and the amount of time the subjects studied the items suggested that people were monitoring their learning and using this to allocate study time.

However, older adults (with a mean age of 67) used monitoring to a lesser degree than the younger adults (with a mean age of 22), and the results suggested that part of the reason for the deficit in recall commonly found with older adults is due to this factor.

References

1. For a review, see Kausler, D.H. 1994. Learning and memory in normal aging. New York: Academic Press.

2. Delbecq-Derousné, J. & Beauvois, M. 1989. Memory processes and aging: A defect of automatic rather than controlled processes? Archives of Gerontology & Geriatrics, 1 (Suppl), 121-150.

Salthouse, T.A. & Dunlosky, J. 1995. Analyses of adult age differences in associative learning. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 203, 351-360

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