Ecological memory assessment in normal aging. A preliminary report on an Italian population

Forty-eight healthy volunteers were administered a computerized battery of "ecological" memory tests simulating real life everyday tasks and actions such as recalling people's names or telephone numbers. The group was dichotomized according to recent criteria proposed by a NIMH study group. Younger individuals (below 50 years of age) always showed better performances than those over 50. Although the learning curves were significantly lower for the older subgroup, the forgetting rate did not differ, suggesting that most of the memory complaints of the elderly might be attributable to the initial encoding phase of the memorizing activity rather than to a retrieval problem. It seems that easy distractability and inefficient strategic elaboration of incoming information are also, at least in part, responsible for the memory problems associated with normal aging. This article reports preliminary findings of a normative and representative Italian population sample.