Life sometimes hands us lemons especially as we grow older. Memory changes, bodies don’t function as well, loved ones are lost, and living situations change. But what if we turn lemons into lemonade?
Along with the obvious life changes, aging also affects how well we focus and subsequently can remember. As we get older, our ability to tune out distractions becomes less acute. Distractions steal our focus, attention, and our ability to recall things later. But a recent study sought to examine if they could use this changing level of distraction as a tool instead of a hindrance.
Turn Lemons into Lemonade
In the study, young adults and older adults were asked to remember face and name pairs. They found older adults were able to remember more when the faces and name pairs were repeated as a distraction in another activity. This improvement of recall didn’t occur with the younger group of adults. It appears this would be ‘lemon’ phenomenon of being easily distracted is a processing technique that changes as we get older. Using the fact that distractions register more with older adults could even be used as a technique to aid in recall. Now that’s making lemonade out lemons!
Just like in the study we too can take what might be considered a liability and turn it into an asset. Often this can be done simply by adjusting our attitude. The way we think matters just as much as what we think. Taking a lemon situation of being more prone to distraction and using it to help with another lemon of remembering less, as in this study, is proof.
How can we turn lemons into lemonade today, this week, and for the rest of our days? We all have issues which change daily and especially as we age. Shifting our perspective of how we see and adapt to our daily challenges is one of the cornerstones of our mission here at MemoryMinders. The research lends credibility but we all know if we shift how we think, we can wind up with lemonade and not simply lemons. So don’t just sit there, go make some lemonade today!
Journal Reference:
Renée K. Biss, Gillian Rowe, Jennifer C. Weeks, Lynn Hasher, Kelly J. Murphy. Leveraging older adults’ susceptibility to distraction to improve memory for face-name associations.. Psychology and Aging, 2018; 33 (1): 158 DOI: 10.1037/pag0000192