Neuroscience
Among other things, I've researched and written about aging for the past thirty years. My belief is that much of what we attribute to the aging process can be prevented or reversed and that a major culprit in unsuccessful aging is our condescending attitude toward older adults.
Of course we mean no harm - especially when we're dealing with beloved family members - but harm we do. They are probably the ones we hurt the most, in fact. Ageism is so deeply ingrained in our beliefs that we think we are simply responding to real, age-related incompetence. Instead, we are letting our mindless expectations create the very incompetence we perceive.
At age 89 my father's memory was fragile - he was showing his years. One day we were playing cards and I began to think that I should let him win. I soon realized that, if I saw someone else behaving that way, I'd tell her to stop being so condescending. I might even explain how negative prophecies come to be fulfilled, and I'd go on to explain that much of what we take to be memory loss has other explanations. For instance, as our values change with age, we often don't care about certain things to the degree we used to, and we therefore don't pay much attention to them anymore. The “memory problems” of the elderly are often simply due to the fact that they haven’t noted something that they find rather uninteresting. And then, while I was weighing whether to treat him as a child because part of me still felt that he would enjoy winning, he put his cards down and declared that he had gin.
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Ellen Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard. The first chapter of her latest book Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility is available to read on her website.
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Neuroscience
Ellen Langer: Combating ageism
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Of course we mean no harm - especially when we're dealing with beloved family members - but harm we do. They are probably the ones we hurt the most, in fact. Ageism is so deeply ingrained in our beliefs that we think we are simply responding to real, age-related incompetence. Instead, we are letting our mindless expectations create the very incompetence we perceive.
At age 89 my father's memory was fragile - he was showing his years. One day we were playing cards and I began to think that I should let him win. I soon realized that, if I saw someone else behaving that way, I'd tell her to stop being so condescending. I might even explain how negative prophecies come to be fulfilled, and I'd go on to explain that much of what we take to be memory loss has other explanations. For instance, as our values change with age, we often don't care about certain things to the degree we used to, and we therefore don't pay much attention to them anymore. The “memory problems” of the elderly are often simply due to the fact that they haven’t noted something that they find rather uninteresting. And then, while I was weighing whether to treat him as a child because part of me still felt that he would enjoy winning, he put his cards down and declared that he had gin.
--
Ellen Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard. The first chapter of her latest book Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility is available to read on her website.
Return to the Psychology to the Rescue menu
- Psychology To The Rescue
The fortnightly email version of the BPS Research Digest, first launched in 2003, has today reached its 200th issue. To mark the occasion I've asked a handful of leading psychologists to write 200 words on a time in their lives that their psychology...
- The Game Brain: Memory And Dr. Aaron Nelson
From The Arizona Republic:Fading memory Forgetfulness and compensating for it are part of life Mary Beth Faller The Arizona Republic Oct. 18, 2005 12:00 AM Aaron P. Nelson and his family were driving on their vacation and were about 50 miles from their...
- Neuropsychology Of Attention And Distraction In Older Adults
From The Daily Californian:Distractions Cause Memory Loss By OMEED ELBOUDWAREJ Contributing Writer Wednesday, September 28, 2005 UC Berkeley researchers have used brain imaging to confirm that, contrary to popular opinion, short-term memory loss common...
- Abstract Of The Day: Basic Sensory Issues In Good Diagnostic Approaches
Valentijn SA, van Boxtel MP, van Hooren SA, Bosma H, Beckers HJ, Ponds RW, Jolles J. Change in sensory functioning predicts change in cognitive functioning: Results from a 6-year follow-up in the Maastricht aging study. Journal of the American Geriatrics...
- The Booming Memory Industry
My brain needs Viagra Are memory lapses the result of stressful family lives or multi-tasking? Or maybe the simple aging process? By JAN WONG The Globe and Mail Saturday, March 12, 2005 Updated at 9:26 AM EST [snip] Senior moments are becoming boomer...