What Changes in Age Related Cognitive Decline?
Names One of the chief concerns in middle life cognitive decline is forgetting names. Even people who used to be good at names seem to have trouble, and for those of us who always tried to finesse the matter, it doesn’t get better. Names are challenging because they are isolated bits of information. That’s why most compensatory strategies for remembering names involve associating the name with something else and elaborating on the association. Information that is not connected to anything else is easily lost. Multitasking Because of the decline in working memory, it’s more time consuming and wearying for the brain to alternate among tasks than to do them one at a time. But try telling that to a type A personality. Prospective Memory Prospective memory is remembering to do something in the future – like picking up milk on your way home from work. Husbands get this deficit at the time of marriage, but by about age 45, it affects everyone. Location of Household Items “Where did I put my g
