Is Memory Decline Inevitable?

It could be suggested that if you don’t actively participate in using your memory, you lose the ability to retain and store information. Others might suggest that regardless of active participation in memory systems, it will inevitably decline with old age.

Memory decline or quality of retention can be attributed to the semantic processing of events, including emotions activated and visual cues tied to the experiences (Craik & Lockhart, 1972).

Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) processing resource model of memory deficits implies that the encoding operation an individual experiences, provides a clearer indication of the ability to recall memory in comparison to the willingness one may have to learn.   

Episodic memory is most likely to be forgotten in comparison to semantic memory.  Craik and Lockhart (1973) state, “the meaningfulness extracted from the stimulus rather than in terms of the number of analyses performed upon it” (p. 48).

With this statement in mind, we could question whether memory decline in old age is dependent upon the depth of information processed for example, how often an individual rehearses the information and the emotion or meaning associated with the experience. Are people able to recall their mobile phone number in the older years like they could when younger? Or is it easier to remember the telephone banking password that uses a special date?

It is noteworthy that rehearsal isn’t always necessary for transferring information from short-term memory into the long-term memory as the multi-store model (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) has suggested. Furthermore, the production deficit hypothesis (Kausler, 1970) denotes that older people inefficiently encode information thus making it difficult to retain memory unless they are guided towards attaching meaning to events which can result in memory like that of younger adults.

It may not be a case of memory inevitably declining with age but rather due to dendritic loss and an insistently shrinking cortex as time passes, these are biological changes we cannot avoid. It is, however, the fact that there are different rates at which a person’s memory declines (Craik, 1973) which is also underpinned by the lifestyle one adopts such as how frequently they engage in physical activity that contribute towards retention of memory as we age.

With brain functions such as information processing and multi-tasking becoming difficult overtime, we cannot ignore the fact the components of the brain associated with memory do change. The question of whether it is inevitable for memory to decline in older age I believe is a matter of which memory system is referred to as some structures are more prone to decline than others. For example, working memory tasks such as storage and active processing of information can become disadvantaged or lost with age, Craik (1994).

This is further analysed in neuroimaging theories such as research carried out by Raz et al., (1996) who hypothesised that older adults with smaller brain volume (i.e., hippocampal, parahippocampal) tended to have impaired explicit memory. To conclude, memory declining as we age can be viewed from the perspective of only specific memory components becoming vulnerable and that our environmental cues and intentionally stimulating brain activity contribute towards the continuation of memory across the lifespan.