Memory training: promise for older adults

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Sept. 4 (UPI) -- A new study indicates older adults can be trained to better remember recent events, thereby avoiding short-term memory problems that afflict many seniors.

Older adults often find themselves repeating a story to the same audience within a short period of time. They remember the story but not that they have recently told it. That problem may be resolved using a memory training technique that can help people successfully recollect information across ever-lengthening delays.

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Wake Forest University psychologist Janine Jennings and co-researcher, Larry Jacoby of Washington University, developed the memory training technique.

The psychologists successfully trained a group of older adults --average age 73 -- to improve memory performance. After seven days of training the participants, on average, performed 14 times better on memory tasks.

Jennings said the memory training was aimed at improving overall memory function, rather than teaching recall tricks specific to one memory task.

She said, "The next question to answer is whether the effects occur outside the lab and make a difference in people's everyday memory function."

The study's results appear in the September issue of the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.