Changes in Memory during Late Adulthood Essay Example

the tendency of adults to have a perfect recollection of the various events that occurred during their early childhood or adolescence. The aspect of reminiscence bump is of critical importance in helping adults to maintain their perfect memory operation and this is because by recollecting of the previous events in their early life, the brain of the adult can be triggered to be able to learn new facts. The above aspect of using the reminiscence bump as a tool of helping adults to have a perfect memory is always influenced by the occurrence of the autobiographical memory which can be defined as a memory system of individuals which mainly consist of the life experiences, and the combination of episodic and semantic memory. While episodic compose of personal experiences that an individual always remembers and the various objects and people that he/she associated with, semantic memory on the other hand refers to the recognition of general knowledge and facts that an older person has concerning the world. The above statement, therefore, illustrates the difference between the event based activities and the time-based activities which can be helpful in restoring back the sharpness of an individual in the late adulthood.

One of the strategies that can be helpful in enhancing remote memory among adults is the aspect of elaboration. Elaboration is a psychological strategy which involves the process of assigning meaningful information to various items that a person tries to remember. With such assignment, the non-meaningful information always become easier to remember which in return helps to improve the memory performance of an adult. It is important to understand that the aspect of enhancing the memory of an

adult cannot be achieved without assessing the associative memory deficit.

The associative memory deficit is attributed to the occurrence of poor episodic memory performance of the old people which leads in them being unable to create and retrieve cohesive episodes efficiently. It is the associative memory deficit that first needs to be solved in order to prepare the brain of the adult to be able to process new information and facts. One important information that comes out clearly from the topic of late adult’s memory changes is the issue of deliberate memory and the automatic memory. One of the techniques that have proved to be efficient in addressing the aspect of associative memory deficit is the use of instructions to during encoding and retrieval of information which helps adults to enhance the sharpness of their memory towards encoding and retrieval of information.

While an individual may suffer significantly on his/her automatic memory to be functional, deliberate memory, however, can always be triggered by aspect of recognizing the various past experiences which in return helps to restore back the automatic memory of the person. It is important to understand the difference between deliberate memory and automatic memory. While deliberate memory involves the mastering and remembering of facts based on the experience of an individual, the events and the people that a person is associated with, automatic memory on the other hand involves the natural ability of the brain to remember some of the past activities. During old age period, an individual will always have some technical difficulties in maintaining the automatic memory due to some the inability of the brain to enhance its remote memory ability. It is,

therefore, necessary for the person to be given a chance to see some of the people, objects, or events that were common in his/her previous life time to enable the person enhance the deliberate memory.

One common requirement that is expected from any adult is the aspect of prospective memory. Prospective memory can be defined as a form of memory in which an adult is required to remember and perform some planned action or to even be able to recall a planned intention that the person was expected to undertake in the future. With prospective memory tasks being common in the daily lives of everyone such as students, teachers, and parents, there is need for an individual to be in a position to remember the tasks that he/she is expected to execute. With the world becoming competitive daily, individuals are pressured to enhance their prospective memory in various social environments so as to enhance their performance. Adults are required to remember their tasks and responsibilities that they should perform to their families and also in their working places.

Conclusion

For a long time, memory failure has been associated with old age and young people who suffer from memory failures have been victimized and even stereotyped as old people. Memory is critical to the body function of the brain. Just like a wheel is important for the movement of a motor vehicle, the memory part of the brain is also vital for the operation of the entire body system. cases of old people suffering from acute memory failure has been on the rise and at some point these old people being unable to even remember their name, their family

members, or even their pasts.

It is very distressing emotionally and psychologically when a person becomes unable to remember the most basic information about him/her. Memory failure to a person is like robbing them their fundamental right to life. There is a common saying which states that “Knowledge is power”, however, such knowledge can only be found when a person is able to encode and retrieve important information at any time of the day. It, therefore, means that a person with memory loss is powerless and therefore is explicitly important to adopt strategies to help such people gain back their memory.

Reference

1. Nyberg, L., Lövdén, M., Riklund, K., Lindenberger, U., & Bäckman, L. (2012). Memory aging and brain maintenance. Trends in cognitive sciences, 16(5), 292-305.