Remembrance of Things Present

Have you seen this person? If you're not sure, the chances are you are a senior citizen.

This is a face used in a test devised by Dr Adam Gazzaley at the University of California, San Francisco to determine if your memory is affected by minor distractions. You can take a quick version of the test at the NPR website here. I took it. I'm not telling how well I did.

I started thinking of this aging and memory stuff because of a story in today's Wall St Journal that interviews Gazzaley and other researchers who are looking into issues such as forgetfulness among older people. Robert Lee Hotz's story is here (but I am not sure if you will be able to read it because some of the WSJ stories require a subscription.)

Researchers have concluded that part of the reason for "senior moments" is that older people have more difficulty than younger folk in tuning out minor distractions. Say for example, you're meeting someone for the first time and the phone rings or there's a loud noise. Older people are less likely to remember the person's name because of these interruptions.

Of course, as they say, it's all how you look at it. The researchers are saying older folks aren't as adept at screening out distractions. I think you could say that another way -- younger people don't pay attention to a lot of things that older people do.

The whole memory thing is starting to get attention because of all of us boomers now qualifying for senior discounts. In America, about 8,000 people a day turn sixty. I draw two conclusions from this. First, about sixty years ago many of our parents obviously were making up for lost time and acting like bunnies. And second, there is a real chance that within a few years, more than 78 million people in America will have trouble remembering names.

I recognize how important this issue really is - and how scary it would be to have serious memory loss - but as someone who has always had big gaps in his memory, I am wondering just how anyone will be able to determine if I am getting worse as I get older. At the least the new research gives me a little comfort. I now know that my poor memory probably reflects the fact that I have a long history of not paying much attention to most things.