Good News (for Real!) on Aging Minds

      What am I writing about?  Oh yeah: That tendency we formerly middle-aged people have to . . . draw a blank, to forget, you know, a lot. Not only the name of that neighbor we bumped into outside but why we decided to go outside in the first place. Or, to put it more kindly, that annoying habit that names in particular but facts in general have of slipping from our aging minds.

      I’m writing, too, about that tendency many of us who reach ripe or over-ripe ages have to suspect that such recollection-fails might be indicative of incipient neurocognitive disorder: the dreaded dementia.

      But here’s a surprise: I’ve stumbled upon, of all things, some good news.

      This is hardly going to be the last time the subject of memory loss comes on up this website. (I can’t remember, offhand, if it has come up before. Oh wait . . .)

       The individuals by whom all those names, dates and movies that-starred-what’s-her-name are being forgotten—most likely most of the readers of this website—qualify as members of the “Third Age.” (While raising kids or working, we, unbeknown to ourselves, belonged to the “Second Age”; and most of us are not yet sufficiently dependent or decrepit to earn a place in the “Fourth Age.”)

      I recently had occasion as part of NYU’s program for retirees to hear an expert on Third Age learning: Anat Zohar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was reporting on a study she conducted of 19 highly educated women who ranged in age between 60 and 81.

      Prof. Zohar had two major findings to report: First, that “11 of the 19 participants in the study reported that they are afraid of losing their memory, and eight participants reported that they have already experienced some degree of memory decline compared to previous periods in their lives. The most frequent complaints were a difficulty in retrieving words and names, and memorization.”

      If this was at all cheering, it was only in a misery-loves-company kind of way. But it got more encouraging.

     For Prof. Zohar’s second finding was that “the participants in her study”—these “Third Age” women—actually found, of all things, “good qualities” in their current mental situation. They were in some ways quite satisfied with their aging brains. In fact, Prof. Zohar noted, the same participant may have reported both current memory loss and better quality of learning.”

      Your memory is going but you seem to be able to learn better. Bit paradoxical, no?

      No. Prof. Zohar has an explanation. 

      It has to do with two different theories on how we learn. “The first is the traditional ‘transmission’ model of learning and instruction.” (I’m quoting here from slides she used in her talk.) According to this theory, knowledge is supposed to pass from “teacher to learners,” with “learners” as “passive recipients of information,” and with an “emphasis on memorization.”      

       And that clearly isn’t a kind of learning most of us, at this stage in our lives, are into. We Third Agers tend not to be comfortable sitting at someone’s feet. We’re not particularly passive. And most of us shy away from memorization, in large part because we’ve lost the talent for it.

        But, Prof. Zohar explained, there are a lot of other nontraditional ways to learn, among them: “active learning, experiential learning, inquiry-based learning . . . collaborative learning.” Many of these involve constructing “new knowledge based on prior knowledge . . . acquired from diverse experiences.”

      And guess what? Old people are pretty good at these nontraditional ways of learning. They fit well with things many of us enjoy and now have time to do: such as traveling or chatting or joining book clubs or volunteering at a food bank or asking obnoxious questions.

      Indeed, we like learning by doing, through experience. Most of us have done a lot and are doing our best to do more. And we certainly have, most of us, a lot of experience. We know our way around: what to read, whom to talk to, what to check out, what questions to ask.

      Yup, the wisdom of age.

      And since we’ve learned a lot in our lives—quite a bit of which we still actually remember—we tend to like ways of learning, like these, that build upon what we already know. We tend to like ways of learning that, as Prof. Zohar puts it, involve constructing “new knowledge based on prior knowledge . . .acquired from diverse experiences.”

      Indeed, some of the women in Prof. Zohar’s study noted “explicitly that the quality of learning in this period of their life is superior to that of any other period.”

      Okay, maybe “superior” sounds a bit strong. But being free from the mad hurry-up of the working life certainly can help. And experience can indeed compensate for some retired brain cells in the knowledge-accumulation game.

      And even if you do not currently feel blessed with “superior” learning skills, Prof Zohar’s talk does suggest that most of us can look forward to at least a half-way decent “quality of learning” in our 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe beyond.

      Our minds, the point is, probably ain’t done yet. There’s a good chance we will be able to hold up our end of conversations, stay up to date on what’s going on in the world, continue learning some interesting new things and do reasonably well at Spelling Bee or Wordle for quite a while longer.

       And that strikes me as something worth remembering.