Older adults more likely to have ‘destination amnesia’
By ANITuesday, August 31, 2010
WASHINGTON - Older adults are more prone to forgetting whom they they’ve shared or not shared information with - a condition called ‘destination amnesia’ - reveals a new study.
Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute researchers found that elders are more likely to suffer from this condition than youngster. What’s more, after making these memory errors, they remain highly confident in their false beliefs.
“Destination amnesia is characterized by falsely believing you’ve told someone something, such as believing you’ve told your daughter about needing a ride to an appointment, when you actually had told a neighbour,” said Dr. Nigel Gopie, who conducted the study along with Drs. Fergus Craik and Lynn Hasher.
The simple reason for this condition is that the ability to focus and pay attention declines with age, so older adults use up most of their attention resources on the telling of information and not remembering the context.
“Older adults are additionally highly confident, compared to younger adults, that they have never told people particular things when they actually had,” added Gopie.
The study appears online, ahead of print publication, in the Online First Section of Psychology and Aging. (ANI)
