 been efforts to understand how to promote longevity and positive states of health in later life. The writings of ancient philosophers reveal disagreements in views of positive emotional outcomes in later life. Aging has been described as a largely intractable process versus one involving possibilities for adaptation to new roles. Modern psychiatrists and psychologists considered later life either as a product of early developmental tasks or as a period of continued growth and conflicts that had to be negotiated.
In the 1970s and 1980s, formal models of successful aging emerged. In their influential 1987 article, Rowe and Kahn noted that research on aging was historically dominated by efforts to discriminate between pathological and “normal” aging, with little effort being devoted to understanding the upper end of the continuum (i.e., successful aging). Successful aging was characterized as involving three components: a) freedom from disease and disability, b) high cognitive and physical functioning, and c) social and productive engagement. The MacArthur Network on Successful Aging operationalized these criteria, and followed over a period of seven years a sample of 1000 older adults who met the criteria. Another prominant model of successful aging proposed around the same time period was that of Baltes, who described successful aging in terms of lifespan developmental trajectories, with a focus on behavioral and psychological adaptation to losses.
“There are innumerable important questions about health and aging that psychologists are poised to answer,” says researcher, Denise Park, PhD, of the University of Michigan.
Decline not inevitable
In fact, a new paradigm, centering on the idea that memory and cognitive power don’t necessarily decline with age as traditionally thought, is taking hold within the psychology community.
That concept gained momentum with study results released last fall by a team of Princeton University psychologists. They found that adults continue to grow new brain cells throughout life. Those late-generated cells, they found, may allow older people to bolster their learning and memory capabilities, or even to stave off declines. Such capabilities were never envisioned under the old theory that cells stopped forming - and actually started dying - by age 40.
The byproduct of that report - by Elizabeth Gould, PhD, Alison J. Reeves, Michael S.A. Graziano, PhD, and Charles G. Gross, PhD, in the Oct. 15 issue of Science (Vol. 286, No. l, p. 548-552) - has been hope among researchers.
Why? John Cavanaugh, PhD, a researcher on aging issues at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, believes the answer lies buried in memory, and filed under “Beliefs.”
“With memory, it does appear that people’s belief systems are important,” says Cavanaugh. “There are hints that the kinds of things people tell themselves [about their ability to remember] matter.”
Older people, for instance, might believe their memory and intellectual power is insufficient, and therefore may avoid learning how to use a computer, or may shy away from a training course in strategies for learning and retaining new information.
“The stereotype is that memory is supposed to decline,” adds Cavanaugh, “but that’s still an open question.”
Peter Martin, PhD, a professor of human development at Iowa State puts it even more bluntly: “No matter what your age, the memory is still trainable. You can teach an old dog new tricks.”
Pursuing that theory, researchers are studying the value of having older adults develop memory strategies, perform a daily self-monitoring of their memory and carry out regular mental exercises - for example using associations with one or more of the senses, to encode information into memory.
“But people have to make a conscious decision to do this,” says researcher Robin West, PhD, at the University of Florida. “It’s not going to occur automatically.”
In the meantime, other researchers are approaching the memory puzzle by looking beyond the strategic to the very tactical issues faced in everyday life. A group of Georgia 