Memory Training Needs to Target Specific Difficulties to Be Effective, Suggests Study

A study from the Baycrest Center for Geriatric Care published in Psychology and Aging suggests training programs can help combat memory deterioration if they are customized to an individual's specific memory difficulty, reports ScienceDaily . "One approach to memory intervention is to try and train underlying memory processes so individuals will see improvements in situations that require this mechanism," says University of Toronto Professor Nicole Anderson. "Our study focused on training one memory process, recollection, which typically deteriorates during aging." The results determined such training did significantly improve recollection, with senior participants' ability matching those of people in their 20s. These benefits also persisted when participants were retested three months later. However, older adults did not improve on any of the tasks that should have benefited from having better recollection, such as a memory test for recalling whether words were shown on a screen or heard through headphones. No participants reported any improvements to their memory. "For a long time, memory researchers viewed recollection as a single mechanism, but our work suggests that this is not the case," Anderson says. "Instead, it implies there may be many different types of recollection for different contexts connected to a memory, such as feelings felt at the time, the sounds in the area, or what a person sees at the time."