Muck and Mystery
   Loitering With Intent
blog - at - crumbtrail.org
February 04, 2010
Associative Memory

It improves with age.

scientists at Baycrest's world-renowned Rotman Research Institute have demonstrated that when older adults "hyper-encode" extraneous information – and they typically do this without even knowing they're doing it – they have the unique ability to "hyper-bind" the information; essentially tie it to other information that is appearing at the same time. . .

"We found that older brains are not only less likely to suppress irrelevant information than younger brains, but they can link the relevant and irrelevant pieces of information together and implicitly transfer this knowledge to subsequent memory tasks," . . .

"This could be a silver lining to aging and distraction," said Dr. Hasher, senior scientist on the study. "Older adults with reduced attentional regulation seem to display greater knowledge of seemingly extraneous co-occurrences in the environment than younger adults. As this type of knowledge is thought to play a critical role in real world decision- making, older adults may be the wiser decision-makers compared to younger adults because they have picked up so much more information."

That has been my observation as well.
Posted by back40 at 09:15 PM | cognition

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