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Older adults' memory for medical information, effect of number and mode of presentation: An experimental study
José Miguel Latorre-Postigo1, Laura Ros-Segura1, Beatriz Navarro-Bravo2
1Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychology, University of Castilla-La Mancha. Albacete, Spain; Applied Cognitive Psychology Unit (CICyPA), Albacete, Spain.
Objective:
To analyze different ways of presenting medical information to older adults, tailoring the information and its presentation to the characteristics of memory function in old age.
Methods:
Experimental study. We took into account the following variables: amount of information, type of information and mode of presentation, and time delay.
Results:
The greater the number of recommendations, the lower the recall; visual presentation does not enhance verbal presentation; lifestyle information is recalled better than medication information; after ten minutes the percentage of memory decreases significantly; the first and last recommendations are better remembered.
Conclusion:
As a whole, these findings show that older adults remember more medical information when very few recommendations are provided in each session.
Practice Implications:
It is inadvisable to overload older adults with a large amount of information: It is better to program more consultations and provide less information.