The impact of self-reported hearing difficulties on memory collaboration in older adults

Cognitive scientists and philosophers recently have highlighted the value of thinking about people at risk of or living with dementia as intertwined parts of broader cognitive systems that involve their spouse, family, friends, or carers. By this view, we rely on people and things around us to “scaffold” mental processes such as memory. In the current study, we identified 39 long-married, older adult couples who are part of the Australian Imaging Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) Study of Ageing; all were cognitively healthy but half were subjective memory complainers. During two visits to their homes 1 week apart, we assessed husbands’ and wives’ cognitive performance across a range of everyday memory tasks working alone (Week 1) versus together (Week 2), including a Friends Task where they provided first and last names of their friends and acquaintances. As reported elsewhere, elderly couples recalled many more friends’ names working together compared to alone. Couples who remembered successfully together used well-developed, rich, sensitive, and dynamic communication strategies to boost each other’s recall. However, if one or both spouses self-reported mild-to-moderate or severe hearing difficulties (56% of husbands, 31% of wives), couples received less benefit from collaboration. Our findings imply that hearing loss may disrupt collaborative support structures that couples (and other intimate communicative partners) hone over decades together. We discuss the possibility that, cut off from the social world that scaffolds them, hearing loss may place older adults at greater risk of cognitive decline and dementia

Co-Design of an Integrated Intergenerational Model: Uniting Generations Through Shared Spaces

This report sets out the findings from a research project to develop an intergenerational model of care at Uniting Westmead. We review relevant literature to understand what is already known about the impact of intergenerational care models on wellbeing and development outcomes for young children, older adults, other community members, and staff, and distil the core elements of program implementation that are most influential in determining positive outcomes. The research uses a combination of focus groups followed by a co-design workshop. From the research data we develop principles of practice for intergenerational care. Then, the report presents a Theory of Change, developed using a co-design process, which brought together researcher knowledge of the existing evidence, the practice wisdom of Uniting, the lived experience of the young children attending the early learning centre, the older adult residents, and their families and staff members as co-designers

Direct and generative autobiographical memory retrieval : how different are they?

Theories of autobiographical memory have emphasised effortful generative retrieval, but recent research indicates that subjectively effortless direct retrieval is common. We compared the processes of direct and generative retrieval. Sixty-five participants retrieved 24 autobiographical memories across three cue types: concrete, emotional, and personal. We recorded retrieval latency, and participants judged direct versus generative retrieval and rated memory specificity, vividness, significance, rehearsal, and emotionality. Overall, direct retrieval was common, especially for personal cues. Directly retrieved memories were recalled faster, were less likely to be specific, and were rated more significant, rehearsed, and emotional than generatively retrieved memories. The speed of both direct and generative retrieval varied similarly according to cue type, suggesting they did not involve fundamentally different cognitive processes. These findings challenge theories that assume direct retrieval bypasses constructive processes. Instead we suggest that both direct and generative retrieval involve construction that is similarly affected by cue concreteness and relevance

[In Press] "She starts to be her old self again" : familial reflections on pre-and post-onset identity in people with Alzheimer's and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia

We investigated perceptions of identity in Alzheimer’s disease and behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia. We asked family members of people with dementia to describe them before and after onset of the disease, comparing across type (Alzheimer’s disease versus behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia) and time period. Family members’ perceptions of people with dementia changed over time. Compared with Alzheimer’s disease, behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia was perceived to cause greater disruption to identity and more often associated with negative moral traits. We found a relationship between assessments of moral character and perceived self-continuity. Our data revealed different ways family members navigate stability and change in the identity of their loved ones with dementia

'I remember where the galaxies are and you remember where the stocks are' : older couples' descriptions of transactive memory systems in everyday life

Theoretical descriptions of transactive memory systems (TMSs) have postulated that intimate couples develop coordinated systems for sharing and distributing cognitive labour. Although such systems have been well-studied in research on organisational teams, little research has examined how TMSs operate in the context of intimate relationships. In the current study, we used semi-structured interviews to ask 39 older long-married couples to describe how they shared cognitive labour between them. We used qualitative analysis to examine themes relating to specialisation, credibility, and coordination – the key components of successful TMSs identified in organisational teams. We found that couples described their everyday memory sharing practices in ways that reflected these themes, with our findings revealing nuanced descriptions of sources of specialisation and the division of memory labour in relationships, as well as the impacts of ageing and cognitive decline on couples’ TMSs. We discuss these findings in terms of applications of transactive memory theory to intimate relationships, couples as a dyadic unit of analysis, and the role of intimate relationships in adapting to age-related change

Autobiographical forgetting, social forgetting, and situated forgetting : forgetting in context

In this chapter, we focus on autobiographical memory, which relates to events and experiences in our personal past. We focus in particular on autobiographical forgetting. Autobiographical remembering and forgetting serve a range of functions, especially in maintaining our identity (Conway, 2005; Nelson, 2003) and guiding our behaviour into the future (Pillemer, 2003). In this chapter, we also extend our discussion of forgetting to social memory, which occurs in conversation or community with other people. We focus in particular on social forgetting – both what is not recalled during joint remembering and what is forgotten subsequent to joint memory activities. Social remembering and forgetting serve a range of functions, such as establishing and maintaining relationships, teaching or entertaining others (Alea & Bluck, 2003), and supporting group identity (Sahdra & Ross, 2007)

Transactive memory in small, intimate groups : more than the sum of their parts

Thirty years after social psychologist, Daniel Wegner, pitched a new approach to the study of individual and group behavior, his theory of transactive memory has inspired rich literatures on the cognitive and social lives of small groups, especially in social and organizational domains. We revisit Wegner’s original conceptualization of transactive memory as a feature of long-standing intimate groups, such as romantic couples and other family and friendship groups. We sketch the spread and success of Wegner’s theory across social, organizational, cognitive, and educational domains, noting particular spaces where a renewed focus on intimate groups could add to our vision of transactive memory systems. We review recent interdisciplinary research on couples as socially distributed cognitive systems, which combines influential philosophical views of distributed cognition and the burgeoning experimental memory literature on collaborative recall. We then discuss two core conceptual and methodological challenges of Wegner’s theorizing revealed by intimate and other groups: navigating between memory units, or levels of analysis, and measuring genuine emergence in transactive memory systems. Finally, we suggest an interdisciplinary framework and recommendations for future research on transactive memory in small groups

[In Press] It’s not who you lose, it’s who you are : identity and symptom trajectory in prolonged grief

The death of a loved one has been associated with a range of emotional and cognitive impacts, with up to 10% of the bereaved population experiencing a prolonged grief reaction. Direct investigation of the role of self-identity in the maintenance of grief symptoms is limited and has not discriminated between relationship type. This longitudinal study investigated the differences in grief symptoms over time depending on relationship to the deceased person (partner or adult child), as well as the association between long-term grief symptoms and identity, attachment, and cognitive interdependence. Data from bereaved partners and adult children in The Aarhus Bereavement Study at two- and 18-months post-bereavement were included in this study. They completed questionnaires measuring their grief symptoms at both time points, a measure of attachment at Time 1, and measures of the interdependence of their pre- and post-loss identity with the deceased, their cognitive interdependence, and everyday memory retrieval failures at Time 4. Compared with adult children, bereaved partners experienced more intense grief symptoms at both time points. Regression analysis identified that over and above immediate grief symptoms, key predictors of prolonged grief symptoms were a merged post-bereavement identity with the deceased, younger age, and everyday memory retrieval difficulties. Relationship type and pre-bereavement identity contributed to initial but not prolonged grief symptoms. We discuss these findings in terms of the role of interdependence in prolonged grief

Memory and cognition

This chapter draws on just a few of these traditions in cognitive, clinical, developmental, social, and personality psychology, in the cognitive sciences and cognitive anthropology, in phenomenology and philosophy of mind, and in social ontology to trace one idiosyncratic path through contemporary approaches to memory and cognition. Our choice of topics is driven by a desire to suggest that diverse “cognitive” approaches have much to offer memory researchers in the humanities and social sciences. The recent history of the sciences of memory offers a sharp contrast and corrective to the stereotyped image of cognitive science as a scientistic quest to model all the mind’s complexities on the dull mechanism of our current digital computers. The scope of cognition broadens, as we seek to demonstrate, to include emotion and motivation, embodiment and movement, and to address factors below conscious awareness and control as well as beyond the individual. The activities of remembering that matter in everyday life often involve the interaction and coordination of memory-related processes at many different levels and timescales: neural, cognitive, affective, bodily, social, material, and cultural

Mind the gap : generations of questions in the early science of collaborative recall

At many stops on the London Underground you will read or hear the phrase “mind the gap”. It is an iconic expression that instantly reminds you of London. In early 2013, the widow of actor Oswald Laurence – who 40 years earlier recorded a “mind the gap” announcement that played throughout the capital for many years – approached staff of the London Underground to ask for a copy of his announcement. She said that following her husband’s death she would go to Embankment Station, where his message still played, to hear him again and to remember, at least until his version of the message was phased out (“Mind the Gap”, 2013). In our everyday lives, it is crucial that we keep remembering successfully and keep our memories alive, especially as we age. Memories serve not only to guide our day-to-day actions and plans for the future, but they teach us and teach others, tell us who we are and who we are not, and connect us to our most intimate remembering and life partners: our spouses, children, families, friends, neighbours, colleagues and others (Harris, Keil, Sutton, Barnier, & McIlwain, 2011; Williams, Conway, & Cohen, 2008)