Discussion 11
Write two brief paragraphs answering the questions below. It does not need to be an entire page. Please, only use the readings I uploaded to answer the questions. Examples are below so you can see how I would like it to be structured.
QUESTION
Choose three (3) of the explanations for age differences in memory for the elderly. Give an example of each.
EXAMPLE 1
Three of the explanations for age differences when it comes to memory for the elderly are. An example of difficulty paying attention is when you are talking to your grandparents and they can’t seem to focus on what you are saying, making it very difficult to communicate with them. Another explanation is cognitive slowing, in which elderly people often have slower rates of responding to a cognitive task. An example would be if you ask an elderly person to perform a concussion test. A concussion test would just be responding back to the words.
Lastly contextual cues hypothesis. They will recall fewer contextual cues. For example, they won’t pick up social cues a lot faster than someone else. Elderly people go through a lot of struggles because they are trying to remember certain things and stay young and keep up with young people. Sometimes they are stuck in the glory days but honestly, they should love themselves that much more because they lived in their glory days and they can say that they did a lot more than some of what the youth is doing right now. At the end of the day, they will be remembered through their families’ legacy and it’s just the circle of life.
EXAMPLE 2
Difficulty paying attention: As we get older our attention span varies with our age. We are not attentive to task or conversations as we used to be. The ironic part is that as kids we would pay attention to every little detail or sound that we came across. It would stick to us as teenagers as we were prepared to listen to what teachers or our parents had to command of us. As we get older that changes. For example, someone who is being taught a word math problem and had their neurons firing for answers years ago, now may have difficulty even staying up long enough for a lesson. They may not understand it, and not be interested either.
Cognitive Slowing: I think the reason why our prime 20s are the best age for us to hustle is because of all the energy and the capacity that we have to perform. Our brain is constantly fired up, our body is active, and we are able to do 100 task at once. When it comes to reaching that old age, we may not be able to do as good and especially as fast. It may take a while to understand what the person is even saying that needs to be answered. For example, if we are told to go to medical school at the age of 60 it may be very difficult to study so much material in such a short time span.
Less effective use of memory strategies: The elderly have fewer chunk of information that is stored as memory. This could also be due to the neurological damage that we have as we grow older. For example someone who has Alzheimer’s may have an extremely rough time remembering something that their family is telling them.
