hose 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 Tech researchers, for example, used the daily crossword puzzle as a model for studying differences between young and old in “novel problem-solving” and in memory recall.
Timothy Salthouse, PhD, and David Hambrick, PhD, of Georgia Tech, whose report appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (Vol. 128, No. 21, p. 131-164), were surprised to find no evidence that crossword puzzle-solving reduced, in older adults, the known age-related decline in problem solving ability - nor did it increase the known age-related gains in stored memory.