Memory improvement has been referred to as "one of the world's oldest professions." While the practice of revving up our recall has been around since ancient times, scientific evidence for the impact of such training on memory performance has not. Now, as baby boomers age into "senior moments" and the new brain fitness market emerges as a result, research interest in proving the utility of memory training is likewise on the move.
Of course, memory training has been the subject of many studies over the past several decades. However, most of those studies were small, interventional research trials done in a lab or classroom. In addition, many of the ways we train ourselves to remember better don't really need to be studied; do we really require proof that lists help us remember what we need to do, or that keeping a calendar will boost our memory for appointments?
Recently, several studies have been released that look at the value of memory training. They give us some interesting new reasons why we should all be training our memories, such as:
- Using a strategy can help us remember better. Researchers in the ACTIVE trial, the largest study to date on memory training, recently reported that folks who used a strategy to "cluster" words they had to learn and remember (such as learning them in order, or by a common semantic theme) performed significantly better in remembering the words than folks who did not.
So yes, the latest research suggests memory training does really work. And while we may have known so all along based on previous findings and our own experience, it is nice to know that the science continues to support all that we do to remember better.
(1) Gross, AL., Parisi, J.M., Spira, A.P., Kueider, A.M., Ko, J.Y., Saczynski, J.S., Samus, Q.M., & Rebok, G.W. (in press). Memory training interventions for older adults: A meta-analysis. Aging and Mental Health.
For more by Cynthia R. Green, Ph.D., click here.
For more on memory and cognition, click here.