With the graying of America we will see more and more older adults with memory-related prob­lems. Thus, one important implication of this demo­graphic trend is to meet the needs of this growing issue. The number of funded outreach memory and aging centers is growing in the United States (e. g., the center partnered by Auburn […]

Many normative changes take place in memory as people grow old, such as those in working mem­ory and secondary memory. Still, many aspects of memory functioning do not change, such as the ability to remember the gist of a story. Increasingly forgetting names or what one needs at the super­market, though annoying, appears to be […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What is the difference between normal and abnormal memory aging? • What is the connection between memory and mental health? • How is memory affected by nutrition and drugs? L atarra’s children are concerned. Latarra is 80 and is becoming more and more forgetful. With the scare of Alzheimer’s disease so salient […]

As we have seen throughout this chapter, adults are a very heterogeneous group when it comes to memory performance. Research reviewed earlier has shown that verbal ability, prior knowledge, and familiarity influence how well one performs on memory tasks. Herrmann (1993) argued that individual difference variables should be consid­ered when designing memory training programs. Moreover, […]

The notion that memory can be improved through acquiring skills and practicing them is very old,dating back to prehistory (Yates, 1966). For exam­ple, the story in The Iliad was told for generations through the use of mnemonic strategies before it was finally written down. Books that teach read­ers how to improve their own memory have […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What are the major ways that memory skills are trained? How effective are these methods? • What are the key individual difference variables in memory training? A fter retirement, Alison and Charlie noticed that they were having trouble remembering things more so than they used to. They were worried that given their […]

Memory monitoring involves knowing what you are doing mentally right now. The most popular way researchers study memory monitoring is by having people predict how well they will do on a memory task. One variation of this technique requires that people predict how well they will do before they get a chance to see the […]

Belief in one’s ability to accomplish things is a perva­sive theme in literature, religion, psychotherapy, and many other diverse arenas (Berry, 1999; Cavanaugh & Green, 1990). As it applies to memory, belief in oneself is referred to as memory self-efficacy; it is the belief that one will be able to perform a spe­cific task. This […]

Researchers have explored age differences in metamemory mainly by using questionnaires (see Berry, 1999; Hertzog & Hultsch, 2000 for reviews). Many questionnaires have been developed over the years. Some of them, such as the Metamemory in Adulthood questionnaire (Dixon, Hultsch, & Hertzog, 1988) and the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (Gilewski, Zelinski, & Schaie, 1990), tap several […]

Researchers of memory self-evaluation have focused primarily on two types of awareness about memory. The first type involves knowledge about how memory works and what we believe to be true about it; this type of self-evaluation is referred to as metamemory. For instance, we may know that recall is typically harder than recognition, that memory […]