Senior Citizens Most Likely to Forget Who They Told
What, Reluctant to Admit Mistakes
Researchers say this ‘destination amnesia’ can be
embarrassing and even dangerous - 'I know I told you that!'
Aug. 30, 2010 - Senior citizens often forget with
whom they have shared – or not shared - information, according to a new
study. The researchers call it “destination memory failure,” or
“destination amnesia.” But, even more alarming, they find these seniors
extremely reluctant to admit they are wrong.
It's the kind of memory faux pas that can lead to
awkward or embarrassing social situations and even miscommunication at
critical times, like in a doctor's visit. Ironically, after making these
memory errors older adults remain highly confident in their false
beliefs.
Much-studied protein
involved in aging, and tied to red wine ingredient resveratrol, is
required for recall in mice; but over-expression fails to improve
performance
However, older drivers claim other road users were
responsible for putting them at risk and rarely considered themselves as
responsible for hazardous events
The study, led by Baycrest's Rotman Research
Institute, Toronto, Canada, appears online, ahead of print publication,
in the Online First Section of Psychology and Aging.
"What we've found is that older adults tend to
experience more destination amnesia than younger adults," said lead
investigator and cognitive scientist Dr. Nigel Gopie, who led the study
with internationally-renowned experts in memory and attention, Drs.
Fergus Craik and Lynn Hasher.
"Destination amnesia is characterized by falsely
believing you've told someone something, such as believing you've told
your daughter about needing a ride to an appointment, when you actually
had told a neighbor."
Why are older adults more prone to destination
memory failures?
The ability to focus and pay attention declines
with age, so older adults use up most of their attention resources on
the telling of information and don't properly encode the context (ie.
who they are speaking to) for later recall.
"Older adults are additionally highly confident,
compared to younger adults, that they have never told people particular
things when they actually had," added Dr. Gopie.
"This over-confidence presumably causes older
adults to repeat information to people."
A critical finding in the study is that destination
memory is more vulnerable to age-related decline than source memory.
Source memory is the ability to recall which person told you certain
information.
In the research, 40 students from the University of
Toronto (ages 18 - 30) and 40 healthy older adults from the community
(ages 60 - 83) were divided into two experimental groups.
The first experiment measured destination memory
accuracy and confidence: requiring the individual to read out loud 50
interesting facts to 50 celebrities (whose faces appear on a computer
screen), one at a time, and then remember which fact they told to which
famous person. For example, "a dime has 118 ridges around it" and I told
this fact to Oprah Winfrey.
The second experiment measured source memory
accuracy and confidence: requiring the individual to remember which
famous person told them a particular fact. For example, Tom Cruise told
me that "the average person takes 12 minutes to fall asleep".
In the first experiment for destination memory
accuracy, older adults' performance was 21% worse than their younger
counterparts.
In the second experiment for source memory
accuracy, older and younger adults performed about the same (60% for
young, 50% for old) in recollecting which famous face told them a
particular fact.
The study was funded by the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health
Research, U.S. National Institute on Aging, and a Baycrest Jack and Rita
Catherall Award.
The study follows an earlier one published last
year in Psychological Science by Dr. Gopie (Baycrest's Rotman Research
Institute) and Dr. Colin M. MacLeod (University of Waterloo). That one
looked at disrupted destination memory in a single age group –
university-aged students.
About Baycrest
A health-sciences center affiliated with the
University of Toronto, Baycrest says its internationally-renowned
scientific research and clinical practice is dedicated to “transforming
the journey of aging.”
Keep up with the latest news for senior citizens, baby
boomers
Aug. 30, 2010 - Senior citizens often forget with
whom they have shared – or not shared - information, according to a new
study. The researchers call it “destination memory failure,” or
“destination amnesia.” But, even more alarming, they find these seniors
extremely reluctant to admit they are wrong.
