Using Cognitive Offloading to Mitigate Age-Related Declines in Prospective Memory

项目摘要 随着越来越多的老龄化人口显示出记忆力下降，其中许多仍然无法治疗， 减少预期记忆失败对健康老龄化至关重要。前瞻性记忆对于 随着年龄的增长保持独立性和前瞻性记忆的失败与各种各样的 对健康的影响和日常活动的困难。例如，超过55%的老年人不遵守 药物说明，导致每年超过20万老年人因不良药物而住院治疗 每年可避免的直接医疗费用高达数十亿美元。将信息卸载到外部 来源，如设置闹钟服药，提供了一个简单而有效的手段，以减轻年龄- 相关的前瞻性记忆下降。然而，缺乏基本的认知和元认知知识， 作为卸载决定基础的程序对有效执行构成障碍。这样做的目的 一个建议是通过研究在前瞻记忆中卸载的作用来解决这些知识缺口 编码、存储和检索。这将通过结合行为和生理（瞳孔） 研究前瞻性记忆中与年龄相关的障碍如何以及何时发生的措施（目标1）， 研究如何使用策略训练来改善记忆力的年龄下降（目标2）。结果将 提供了一个全面的理论框架，以确定潜在的前瞻性记忆的机制， 前瞻性记忆中与年龄相关的衰退的来源，以及认知和策略训练的功效， 记忆增强技术这项研究的长期目标是发展识别谁的能力， 将从战略培训干预措施中受益最多，以及应针对哪些具体战略。单独 量身定制的治疗方案将提高改善认知功能的能力， 与年龄有关的记忆衰退这项工作是创新的，在其新颖的使用瞳孔测量检查认知 通过标准行为测量和通过开发一个 在线培训工具，以提高日常前瞻性记忆。这些发现对于理解 改善年轻人、老年人和个人前瞻性记忆功能的治疗选择 阿尔茨海默氏症和相关痴呆症患者。

PROJECT SUMMARY With an increasing aging population showing memory declines, many of which remain untreatable, finding ways to reduce prospective memory failures is critical for healthy aging. Prospective memory is necessary for maintaining independence with increased age and failures of prospective memory are associated with a variety of health consequences and difficulties in daily activities. For example, over 55% of older adults do not adhere to medication instructions, leading to the annual hospitalization of over 200,000 older adults due to adverse drug reactions and billions of dollars annually in avoidable direct healthcare costs. Offloading information onto external sources, such as setting an alarm to take medication, provides an easy and effective means to mitigate age- related prospective memory declines. However, a lack of basic knowledge about the cognitive and metacognitive processes underlying offloading decisions presents barriers to effective implementation. The purpose of this proposal is to address these gaps in knowledge by examining the role of offloading during prospective memory encoding, storage, and retrieval. This will be accomplished by combining behavioral and physiological (pupillary) measures to examine how and when age-related breakdowns in prospective memory occur (Aim 1) and examining how strategy training can be used to ameliorate age declines in remembering (Aim 2). The results will provide a comprehensive theoretical framework for identifying the mechanisms underlying prospective memory, the source of age-related declines in prospective memory, and the efficacy of cognitive and strategy training as a memory enhancement technique. The long-term goal of this research is to develop the capacity to identify who will benefit most from strategy training interventions and which specific strategies should be targeted. Individually tailored treatment options will result in increased ability to improve cognitive functioning for those experiencing age-related memory decline. This work is innovative in its novel use of pupillometry to examine cognitive processes not otherwise observable with standard behavioral measures and through the development of an online training tool to improve everyday prospective memory. The findings will be significant for understanding treatment options to improve prospective memory functioning in younger adults, older adults, and individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.