Aging and memory: a personal perspective

Abstract

In this commentary, I summarize the findings and theoretical ideas on age-related differences in human memory that I have published between the 1960s and the present day. My first experiments were focused on age differences in short-term memory, the distinction between primary memory and working memory in this regard, and on the point that whereas age-related differences are minimal in primary memory, there are age-related decrements in working memory and in the “secondary memory” of events that must be retrieved and entered back into conscious awareness. After developing the levels of processing ideas in the 1970s, I suggested that memory problems in older adults were due to inefficient encoding and retrieval processing operations. Further, that these inefficiencies were attributable in part to the declining effectiveness of executive control processes in the brain’s frontal lobes—giving rise to a deficit in self-initiated processing. My colleagues and I also discovered that such deficits could be reduced, and even eliminated, by the provision of adequate environmental support during both encoding and retrieval processing. The article presents some experimental work supporting these ideas. More recently I have been involved in collaborative studies using brain imaging techniques, and these studies have made a start in elucidating the brain mechanisms underlying age-related changes in memory performance.

Keywords: Aging, memory, recall, recognition, environmental support, self-initiated processing