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The Effect of Age on Memory

Conference Paper · January 2018

DOI: 10.5220/0008682601730177

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Abdulkhaleq Al-Qahtani
King Khalid University
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The Effect of Age on Memory

Abdulkhaleq A. Al-Qahtani1
1
Department of English, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia

Keywords: Memory, Learning, Aging.

Abstract: This paper presents an overview of the memory system and how it’s affected by age. Each type of memory
is also explained and divided into their sub-memories; for sensory memory, there are three types namely:
iconic memory for visual stimuli, echoic memory for aural stimuli and haptic memory for touch; for long-
term memory, there are procedural and declarative memories. After each memory type, the paper presents
information found in the literature as to how some aspects of memory are influenced by age. The conclusions
are as follows: memory is not affected by age as a whole system, what is affected are certain functions of
memory subcategories. For example, little evidence shows that semantic memory, procedural memory and
episodic memory are affected by age. In addition, encoding and retrieving information from and to long-term
memory are found to be influenced. The paper concludes with an assertion that most if not all age-related
deficiencies can be overcome.

1 INTRODUCTION The name sensory is connected directly to the

function of this type of memory, the senses. A sensory
Aging has been perceived to have a direct impact on memory is available for every sensory channel: iconic
memory loss. This perception is not grounded on memory for visual stimuli, echoic memory for aural
research findings but was rather associated with stimuli and haptic memory for touch. Here is how it
anecdotes of aging people. As people age, they works; information is first encountered by the senses
become sensitive as to what abilities they have lost sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Then the
and what they have retained over the passing years; information is saved for a very short time from 1 – 5
memory is one of those abilities. The observations of seconds. Then the selected information is sent to the
aging adults are not fully refuted by research on next memory (the short term memory). Then the
memory and aging. There seems to be a fair amount function of this type of memory stops. The place in
of correlation between aging and a certain number of the human brain in which information is saved is
memory functions (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). called sensory registers. The information at this stage
In order to understand how age affects memory, is not processed (Matlin, 1998). At this point a
one needs to know how memory works in the first person decides which part of information is worth
place. There are three main types of memory. i.e., further processing and which part is not through the
sensory memory, short-term memory (sometimes process of attention. It is worth noting that most of
referred to as the working memory), and long-term the information received in the sensory registers is
memory. Each type has its own constituent parts that filtered out of the system (Ormrod, 1995).
may or may not be affected by age either entirely or An example of sensory memory would be a key
partially. This paper will attempt to outline the main word heard in a lecture after losing attention to what
types of memory and their subsections and explore in the lecturer had just said that triggered a person’s
the light of research findings how each and every type mind to get back to the lecture. Remembering the
might be affected by age. word right before that key word is locating that word
in the echoic memory. Another example would be a
hearer’s attention to someone reading a sentence
2 SENSORY MEMORY when the hearer holds the words at the beginning of
the sentence until the speaker finishes to make sense
This type of memory is the first part of the of the whole utterance. These words are held in the
memory system where information is first perceived.

173
Al-Qahtani, A.
The Effect of Age on Memory.
DOI: 10.5220/0008682601730177
In Improving Educational Quality Toward International Standard (ICED-QA 2018), pages 173-177
ISBN: 978-989-758-392-6
Copyright c 2019 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
ICED-QA 2018 - International Conference On Education Development And Quality Assurance

echoic memory and are not processed until the thinking at the present moment. This store works in
sentence is uttered in full. A third example would be the following manner: through selective attention,
watch someone/something move; the iconic memory information move from sensory memory to short-
saves each snapshot of the moving picture and term memory; here, two factors are crucial: the
connects it with the next before processing the whole amount of information and the duration. The
scene into a meaningful thought. It is just like the maximum normal amount of information that an adult
pictures on a cartoon film where every picture is fixed can hold in a single time is seven items of
alone and then connected to the others to form a information, and the duration is roughly from 20 to
motion on the film. Iconic memory retains 30 seconds. The items of information could be
unprocessed pictures for a short while to connect isolated units like one digit number or chunks where
them to the rest and ultimately move on to the next a group of related smaller units are lumped together
step in the memory system (the short-term memory). to form a one-item chunk. The items are maintained
The capacity of the sensory memory is not that in short-term memory by means of rehearsal.
large (Ormrod, 1995). The fact that our brains can The process of chunking is proved to be valuable
take in large amount of information fairly accurately, for enhancing the performance of sort-term memory
the length of time allowed in the sensory registers is (Salthouse, 1996). One chunk, or example, could
very short; and therefore, the maximum amount include the three digit numbers of an area code in a
allowed in this memory is almost one unit of telephone number instead of storing the same chunk
information at a time (Matlin, 1998). To be more as a three different digits. The one chunk in this case
specific, iconic memory can only last for less than one counts as a single unit for the possible seven units
second, and echoic memory can only hold up to five mentioned earlier in the maximum capacity of short-
seconds. It is interesting to observe that the capacity term memory. Consequently the maximum duration
of sensory memory is measured by time not by space for normal adult could also expand as a result of
or quantity (Salthouse, 1996). chunking.
From what is said about sensory memory thus far, Short-term memory has been proven to have
it is quite obvious that age could have a fairly strong direct impact on language learning (Gathercole and
impact on at least two types of the sensory memories Baddeley, 1993), and people who have problems in
namely the iconic and the echoic, but with lesser this type of memory exhibit learning disabilities.
impact on the haptic memory. Contrary to Merriam Reading, for example, engages short-term memory
& Caffarella (1999 )who argue that sensory memory directly in the process. The reader needs to hold
is not affected by age, as people age, they lose vision chunks of read words for a short time to connect them
and hearing more than other senses (touch, smell, and to the words following them and the words before
taste). Thus, the amount received into the iconic and them. Any disturbance in the short-term-memory,
echoic memories will be increasingly reduced, as therefore, would result in reading difficulty or even
people grow older. On the other hand, the other disability (Hulme and Mackenzie, 1992).
senses will remain intact, in most part, well into late The influence of aging on short-term memory is
adulthood; and therefore, very little negative impact found in literature. The speed by which young vs.
may be ascribed to the haptic memory as well as the older adults process information varies. Older adults
registers for the smell and taste. tend to process information in their short-term
In sum, we cannot assert that the sensory memory memory slower than that of younger adults (Bors and
is affect by age because it is divided into sub- Forrin, 1995). Salthouse (1991) conducted a study in
memories, which are not all affected in the same way which he employed the most common way of
or manner. Nevertheless, older people could make up assessing short-term memory, which is the digit-span
for such deficiencies by checking up their vision and test. In this test informants are given a sequence of
hearing and use aids to sharpen up these senses and numbers or letters and then asked to recall them.
reduce aging consequences to this type of memory. Older adults perform well in the recall as well as
younger adults but when the older ones were asked to
3 SHORT-TERM MEMORY manipulate the information in other ways like recall
them in refers order, younger adults outperformed the
Short-term memory, sometimes called the working older. Salthouse explained this phenomenon as an
memory, is the next step in the memory system right indicator that older adults have a fragile short-term
after the sensory memory. What is working memory? memory.
It is a limited-capacity store that can hold entering Another research conducted by Swanson (1999)
information for a few seconds – it is what is in your found that there are differences between older and

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The Effect of Age on Memory

younger adults in the general capacity of two different memory by means of encoding and/or elaboration.
processes: accessing new information and The key component of encoding and elaboration
maintaining old information. In this study, older processes is the meaningfulness of information and its
adults are found to have more problems accessing relations to what the person has already established
new information than younger adults. As for the (schemata). For example, one piece of information
efficiency of the maintenance of old information, the would be much more easier to encode and/or to
study did not support a significant difference between elaborate if the person can relate that new information
young and older adults. Thus, age affects only certain to prior experiences/memories he/she had stored
tasks of short-term memory but not the whole before. The second process, which is the retrieval
function. Older adults have problems accessing new process, acts in two processes either by recognition or
information but once the information enters the by recall. In both processes, the person has to attend
system, older adults seem to keep the new to what is really needed and where to find them
information as well as the younger adults (Swanson, among the meaningful files. Recognition is less
1999). troublesome because the person is given clues, but
In short, age-related issues found in the literature recall demands more efforts to retrieve the needed
suggest that only two aspects are found to be relevant: information.
the speed of performance and the difficulty of Long-term memory is divided into sub-memories
accessing new information. As for the speed of based on the type and function of different kinds of
performance, researchers like Salthouse suggest that information. The known categories are as follows:
the slow performance of adults might have to do with declarative memory or explicit memory, which is the
the physiological aspect of aging rather than a memory that people actively retrieve (recall and
cognitive process. As for the difficulty of accessing recognize) and procedural memory or implicit
new information for older adults, Swanson and others memory which we learn over time and then perform
argue that that older adults experience a strict intake tasks as needed without much conscious effort, like
of new information due to two reasons: poor sensory reading and swimming (Anderson, 1996). Skills
registers’ input and fixed expectations of what should learned/deposited in the procedural memory are hard
be processed. It stands to reason, as I see it, that to learn and hard to forget like the example of reading.
people lose increasing amount of their vision and Declarative memory in turn is divided into two
hearing as they grow older and this process affects the subcategories based on the functions of these
amount of input to shot-term memory. Also, people memories: semantic memory and the episodic
develop expectations of the world and what to memory. Semantic memories are those memories of
encounter as they grow older and novel input might general knowledge and subject matter knowledge we
be overlooked because it was not expected. In other learn at schools and in life at large. It contains
words, the new information did not fit in the concepts, verbal information, rules, and problem-
established pattern/framework that has been solving abilities. Semantic memory stores
established over the years. information in a form of schemata rather than images.
Episodic memories are those memories related to life
4 LONG-TERM MEMORY events that people experience as they live. Usually
this type of memory is organized around episodes of
The third and the last type of memory is long-term our lives in a form of images. Usually it helps us
memory. Long-term memory is the final destination remember related information around events and
for the information input. As the name suggests, make sense of what had happened.
long-term memory saves information taken in from Having presented the major components of long-
one minute to many years for later retrieval. Unlike tem memory, one would wonder how would age
working memory/short-term memory, information in affect this type of memory and which part is more
the long-term memory is not there in a person’s affected than the other. Research findings suggest
present thinking. Information is organized in files that not all types of long-term memory are affected in
based on meaningful connections between units of the same way and at the same level. Procedural
information. memory, under normal circumstances, for example, is
The long-term memory works in two-ways not affected by age as the declarative memory. And
directions: storing/depositing new information and semantic memory is not affected by age as the
retrieving information from the store. As for episodic memory. Episodic memory, in fact, is the
depositing information process, information is one that is found to be more endangered by age more
transferred to long-term memory from short-term than any other memory type (Bee, 1996).

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ICED-QA 2018 - International Conference On Education Development And Quality Assurance

Shinkeigaku (1994) conducted a study to measure the Working memory is affect by age as a result of the
affect of age on episodic memory. The subjects of slowing down of the processes of receiving and
this study were two groups of Japanese, aged forty to sending information to the long-term memory. Also,
seventy-five years. They were asked 85 questions it is affected by the fact that information in short-term
about public events that are familiar to their Japanese memory tends to decay more rapidly in older adults.
culture. The events were scatted over four decades. Long term-memory is more affected in the area of
The researcher found that as age goes up informants’ episodic memory more than the two other types. The
performance went down (missed correct answers). explanation given in the literature ascribed such
Older informants did not do as good as the younger observation to the two processes of encoding and
ones in both old memories – thirty years old events retrieving to and from the long-term memory. At the
and recent events – ten and fewer years old events. encoding level, older adults are inclined to
The results of this study confirm that episodic deposit/encode new input in well-established manner
memory is significantly affected by age. Semantic by which new information get subsumed under
memory, on the other hand, is less affected by age certain existing category; if the category is not there,
because older people exhibit better or equivalent then the encoding process becomes more difficult. As
knowledge as younger adults (Bee, 1996). As a for the retrieval process, older people tend to exert
matter of fact, older people have more robust more effort to recall information due to confusion,
schemata than younger adults due to longer interferences, and ill categorized information.
experiences and accumulating meaningful input. The good news is that most of the difficulties cited
In sum, the two main problems usually in the research on the effect of age on memory are not
experienced by older adults due to age, as it applies fatal. As a matter of fact, people can overcome such
to long-term memory, are the two processes of difficulties by employing certain techniques. For
encoding and retrieving information. As for the example, at the sensory memory stage, older adult
encoding issue, researchers have detected problems in could sharpen their vision and hearing by using
the process of encoding new information. They prescribed aids. Working memory could be saved by
ascribed such observation to the fact that older adults rehearsing and chunking items of information. And
cannot fit first-time new information in any existing long-term memory processes of encoding and
schemata; here the well-established schemata resist retrieval could be maintained by practicing recall and
encoding the new information for lack of finding a connecting new ideas to existing knowledge. Other
suitable place for it within the space already suggestions to improve long-term memory retrieval
organized (Swanson, 1999). Also, retrieval process and encoding may include focusing attention on the
is problematic for older adults. This process is either tasks, avoiding distractions, intending to put effort,
recognition or recall. If the task requires recognition, avoiding tension, and using external aids like a paper
the age variable is not found significant: older adults and a pencil.
and younger adults function relatively equally.
However, recall process is found to be more difficult
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