Year: 2001
Type: article
Abstract: When asked which memory skill they wanted to improve most, 61% of older adults mentioned learning and remembering of names among their top four choices (Leirer, Morrow, Sheikh, & Pariante, 1990).Such a high agreement does not come as a surprise because we all at one point or another had the opportunity to suffer through a potentially highly embarrassing encounter with a person who treated us with outmost familiarity but about who we had not the faintest clue.If we were lucky we recognized the face and only missed her or his name...It appears that these situations are difficult to prepare forquite unlike the situation in the worn out story about the grocery store where assembling a shopping list ahead of time quite effectively takes care of potential memory problems in the store.Moreover, not remembering the face or the name of a person is a communication failure of very high personal relevance.If face and name memory can be improved effectively, or if at least we have better understanding of the boundary conditions under which this were possible, we may take care of at least one very salient aspect of older adults' communication problems.There is much evidence that in principle healthy older adults are able to acquire new cognitive and in particular mnemonic skills (for a recent review see Camp, 1998, Verhaeghen, Marcoen, & Goossens, & 1992).For example, Kliegl, Smith and Baltes (1989) trained young and old adults in the method of loci for the recall of word lists.Shortly after instruction in the mnemonic both age groups exhibited a noticeable improvement of their performance.Indeed old adults scored higher than untrained young adults -a result of considerable practical importance because this is about the level most old adults wish to achieve in a training program.Mnemonic training also led to a clear
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W829299257