Memory-skills training for older adults

It is clear from this series of studies that older people can be taught to use some mnemonic strategies to enhance encoding of new information into memory. The effects of such training, however, may be difficult to maintain. Further, some mnemonic strategies appear to be more effective for older people than others. Categorizing works well as a way to improve list recall. Older people spend more time encoding the material, presumably because the elaborative process involved in the categorizing technique takes more time, and this pays off when the list is recalled. On the other hand, interactive images do not seem very useful in aiding the recall of names and faces. Perhaps recall of names and faces is inherently a difficult task or one that is especially susceptible to age-related memory changes. There may be better strategies to assist recall of names and faces than interactive images, especially for older adults. Given the success with the categorizing technique, perhaps more attention should be paid to verbal strategies rather than imaging. Because remembering people's names is such a prominent everyday memory problem, a great deal more attention should be paid to the search for effective memory skills that can be applied to this task. Most of the research on memory training has focused on skills that can be applied at encoding--when the information is first encountered. This has been a reasonable approach; the strength of a memory most certainly depends on how well the information is learned. At the same time, greater attention should be paid to memory skills that can be applied at retrieval. In many instances there is the need to recall information that was learned incidentally or to which encoding strategies were not applied. A first attempt to develop such a retrieval skills training program was not clearly effective (Heller, 1989). Perhaps the retrieval strategies were inadequate; perhaps people did not use them. Older people appear to have untapped retrieval skills that can be brought to bear if they are sufficiently motivated. If this is the case, it should be possible to devise retrieval strategies that can be taught and used more routinely. Neither training in encoding nor training in retrieval strategies seemed to assist recall of brief prose passages. Again because of the importance of this type of memory to everyday life (e.g., remembering a conversation), a great deal more attention should be paid to uncovering the important components of such memory and to ways it can be enhanced.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)