Memory Changes in Normal Aging

Does memory decline as we get older? It certainly seems as if it does: People in their 60s and 70s have greater difficulty remembering names and finding words than they did in their teens and 20s; they also report an increasing liability to ev eryday forgetfulness?where they left their glasses or a book?or a fail ure to carry out some action that they had decided on only moments before. Several questionnaire stud ies1 have shown that older adults re port these and other memory prob lems in their everyday lives; so it does not seem that age-related losses in memory are attributable simply to negative stereotypes of the elderly held by younger people, or to the results of artificial laboratory tests of memory, which older people might find boring and irrelevant. On the contrary, it appears that age-related declines in memory are real, and that they cause concern in many older people. The purpose of the present article is to give an overview of some theoretical ideas and exper imental findings that bear on the phenomenon of age-related memory loss. Given the space restrictions, the article focuses largely on my own point of view; readers will find reviews that are more comprehen sive, and less partisan, in the recent literature.2