Mediating Age-Related Changes in Memory with Recall Intervention

Memory- the lifeform that gives life its meaning and stores valuable information key to the success of our species. As far as we know, aging, a natural and unavoidable process, causes aspects of our memory to decline. Prospective memory is involved with remembering to complete an action or task at a future date and time while retrospective memory is involved in the remembrance, or perhaps not remembering, key details about items, places, or people experienced in the past. Different neural processes underlie each type and in exposing the neural process and further research, the factor to which aging impacts each memory is revealed. By conducting an exploratory study of autobiographical and declarative memory, researchers Carol Wilkinson and Ira Hyman revealed inconsistencies between memory errors experienced when asked to recall autobiographical information as opposed to when participants were asked to recall words in a list such as in a declarative memory task. When using the Dissociative Experience Scale to quantify memory errors, the inability to correctly source monitor a particular memory was different for autobiographical memory errors as opposed to declarative memory errors. This suggests that different processes may underlie different types of memory (Wilkinson & Hyman, 1999).Undergraduat