Psychologists say they have compelling evidence that older adults can eliminate forgetfulness and perform as well as younger adults on memory tests. 

They used a distraction learning strategy to help older adults overcome age-related forgetting and say it boosted their performance to that of younger adults. Distraction learning sounds like an oxymoron but some claims are that older brains are adept at processing irrelevant and relevant information in the environment, without conscious effort, to aid memory performance.  It's intriguing enough it will likely be on Dr. Oz next month.

In three experiments, healthy younger adults recruited from the University of Toronto (aged 17– 27) and healthy older adults from the community (aged 60 – 78) were asked to study and recall a list of words after a short delay and again, on a surprise test, after a 15-minute delay. During the delay period, half of the studied words occurred again as distraction while people were doing a very simple attention task on pictures.

Although repeating words as distracters had no impact on the memory performance of young adults, it boosted older adults' memory for those words by 30% relative to words that had not repeated as distraction.

"To eliminate age-related forgetfulness across three consecutive memory experiments and help older adults perform like younger adults is dramatic and to our knowledge a totally unique finding," said Lynn Hasher, senior author of the paper. "Poor regulation of attention by older adults may actually have some benefits for memory."

The findings, if replicated, have intriguing implications for designing learning strategies for the mature, older student and equipping senior-housing with relevant visual distraction cues throughout the living environment that would serve as rehearsal opportunities to remember things like an upcoming appointment or medications to take, even if the cues aren't consciously paid attention to.

 "Older brains may be be doing something very adaptive with distraction to compensate for weakening memory," said Renée Biss, lead investigator and PhD student at Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research Institute. "In our study we asked whether distraction can be used to foster memory-boosting rehearsal for older adults. The answer is yes!" 

They say that while older adults are watching television or playing a game on a tablet, boosting memory for goals (such as remembering to make a phone call or send a holiday card) could be accomplished by something as simple as running a stream of target information across the bottom of their tablet or TV.  

Citation: Renée K. Biss, K. W. Joan Ngo, Lynn Hasher, Karen L. Campbell, and Gillian Rowe, 'Distraction Can Reduce Age-Related Forgetting', Psychological Science   February 20, 2013 doi:10.1177/0956797612457386