Memory plasticity across the life span: Uncovering children's latent potential.

Abstract

Memory plasticity, or the ability to improve one's memory performance through instruction and training, is known to decline during adulthood. However, direct comparisons among middle childhood, adulthood, and old age are lacking. The authors examined memory plasticity in an age-comparative multisession training study. One hundred and eight participants ages 9 -10, 11-12, 20 -25, and 65-78 years learned and practiced an imagery-based mnemonic technique to encode and retrieve words by location cues. Individuals of all ages were able to acquire and optimize use of the technique. Older adults and children showed similar baseline performance and improvement through mnemonic instruction. However, in line with tenets from life-span psychology (P. B. Baltes, 1987), children profited more from mnemonic practice and reached higher levels of final performance than did older adults.

Who Benefits the Most? Individual Differences in the Transfer of Executive Control Training Across the Lifespan

“…The fact that we found compensation effects after the training of executive control is in stark contrast to evidence from strategy-based memory training, which often resulted in magnification effects (e.g., Baltes and Kliegl 1992;Brehmer et al 2007;Lindenberger et al 1992;Verhaeghen and Marcoen 1996). This pattern has been explained by younger adults having more cognitive resources to acquire and implement new strategies.…”

“…Evidence for this view comes often-but not exclusively-from memory strategy training studies applying mnemonic techniques, such as the method of loci (e.g., Baltes and Kliegl 1992;Brehmer et al 2007;Lindenberger et al 1992;Verhaeghen and Marcoen 1996). The second and opposing account, referred to as the compensation account, assumes that high-performing individuals would show less benefit because they are already functioning at the optimal level and have less room for improvement.…”

Comparing memory skill maintenance across the life span: Preservation in adults, increase in children.

“…In addition to tracing age-related similarities and differences in the magnitude and relative amount of plasticity following cognitive intervention, examination of whether the levels of skilled memory performances acquired previously can be maintained over a longer time period could help researchers to connect microgenetic variability with long-term changes and potentially also with ontogenetic changes, consequently deepening scientific understanding of maturation, senescence-related changes, and learning across the life span. In the present study, we extended the findings of Brehmer et al (2007) by exploring life-span differences in the degree to which skilled episodic memory performance is maintained over time. For this purpose, we reassessed the participants of the original study 11 months after the end of the first memory training study.…”

Sleep in children improves memory performance on declarative but not procedural tasks

“…Declarative memories benefit particularly from slow wave sleep (SWS), whereas procedural memories benefit particularly from REM sleep (Plihal and Born 1997;Peigneux et al 2004;Marshall and Born 2007), aside from distinct contributions of non-REM sleep stage 2 to memory consolidation (Gais et al 2002;Fogel and Smith 2006;Peters et al 2007). Childhood, compared with adulthood, is characterized not only by distinctly greater amounts of sleep and SWS (Anders et al 1995;Ohayon et al 2004) but also by a tremendous extent of brain and behavioral plasticity, determining the child's capability to rapidly acquire huge amounts of facts and to effectively shape skills in response to environmental challenges (Li et al 2006;Brehmer et al 2007). However, the role developmental sleep plays for consolidating memory has only been scarcely examined.…”