Research: Old Dogs Learn New Tricks (1)
"… old dogs rarely have real difficulty learning new tricks; they more often have difficulty convincing themselves that it is
worth the effort." (Schaie & Geiwitz, 1982)
In this article, Buzan is emphasizing that memory loss associated with increasing age may be more of a reflection of how we
view older people, how they view themselves, and how we test them in the laboratory, than actual memory decline due solely to the ageing process.
While test results often show poor memory performance in the elderly, two factors that have been shown to confound these test results are
level of interest and the use of timed performance.
Reystak, in the book The Mind (1988), spends a great part of the chapter on Ageing stressing that we see a decrease in speed
of processing in the elderly.
Often in laboratory tests, we do not allow the elderly subject adequate time with which to encode and recall the
information. Reystak points out that, if the elderly subjects are allotted as much time as needed, they often perform at a level that is
comparable with younger subjects in terms of recall.
Walsh (1975) points out that the level of interest can affect performance of
recall. He reports a study by Hulicka in which she tried to teach associations of actual words paired with nonsense letters. She found
that many elderly subjects performed poorly because they refused to learn nonsense words, and felt that the task was not ‘worth the effort’.
When the task was changed to an association of occupational names paired with actual surnames, the elderly performed better.
Walsh points out that lab experiments may often be perceived as meaningless and may
negatively affect the elderly subjects’ performance, while making the task meaningful may positively affect the performance.
An important area that Buzan brings up concerns the neuronal loss due to normal ageing. As Buzan states, there is no
conclusive evidence in the literature regarding just how much of the brain is lost, and just what areas are affected. However, the interest
regarding neuronal loss may be directed.
Reystak (1988) raises major theoretical issues that are particularly relevant here. He reports a
study in which the amount of blood flow and oxygen consumption to the brain were compared in healthy 20 year-old men and healthy 70 year-old
men. If there is substantial neuronal loss, there should also be a decrease in blood flow and oxygen consumption. The results showed that
there was no difference between the groups in these measures.
Reystak points out that, while there may possibly be neuronal loss accompanying the ageing process, this loss may be offset
by the redundancy and plasticity of the brain.
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