Head pats

HHS HealthBeat (September 03, 2009)
Head pats

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Not remembering whether they’ve taken a medication can be a problem for older people who take medications regularly. So Mark McDaniel of Washington University of St. Louis was looking at ways to help seniors remember whether they did something – or still need to do it.

In his study, seniors were more likely to do something twice if they thought they hadn’t done it once.

But McDaniel found having the seniors make an unrelated gesture as they performed their lab task improved things:

[Mark McDaniel speaks] "Older adults who were asked to put their hand on their head when they were also making the prospective memory task appeared to remember having made that task, and the repetition errors declined substantially."

The study was in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition. A researcher with McDaniel was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: September, 03 2009

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Head pats