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

项目总结 随着日益老龄化的人口表现出记忆力下降，其中许多仍然无法治愈，想方设法 减少预期记忆衰竭是健康衰老的关键。前瞻记忆是必要的 随着年龄的增长保持独立性和前瞻记忆的失败与多种因素有关 对健康的影响和日常活动中的困难。例如，超过55%的老年人不坚持 每年有20多万老年人因药物不良而住院 反应和每年数十亿美元的可避免的直接医疗成本。将信息分流到外部 设置服用药物的闹钟等来源提供了一种简单而有效的手段来缓解年龄- 相关的前瞻性记忆下降。然而，缺乏关于认知和元认知的基本知识 作为减负决策基础的流程对有效实施构成障碍。这样做的目的是 一项建议是通过研究前瞻记忆中分流的作用来解决这些知识差距 编码、存储和检索。这将通过结合行为和生理(瞳孔)来实现。 检查与年龄有关的前瞻记忆障碍如何以及何时发生的措施(目标1)和 研究如何使用策略培训来改善记忆力下降的年龄(目标2)。结果将会是 为识别前瞻记忆的潜在机制提供了一个全面的理论框架， 与年龄相关的前瞻记忆下降的来源，以及认知和策略训练的有效性 一种记忆增强技术。这项研究的长期目标是发展识别谁是 将从战略培训干预措施中获益最多，以及哪些具体战略应成为目标。单独地 量身定制的治疗方案将提高患者改善认知功能的能力 与年龄相关的记忆力下降。这项工作的创新之处在于它新颖地使用了斜视测量法来检查认知 使用标准行为度量和通过开发 改善日常前瞻性记忆的在线培训工具。这一发现将对理解 改善年轻人、老年人和个体前瞻记忆功能的治疗选择 患有阿尔茨海默病和相关的痴呆症。

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.