Elderly ‘can regain skills’

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 16

Elderly ‘can regain skills’

New results from a study of elderly people indicate that the partial loss of certain mental skills may be due more to disuse than disease and can be reversed With simple mental exercises. A study of 229 members of a Puget Sound group health organisation in Seattle, showed that of those whose inductive reasoning and spatial orientation skills had declined since 1970, about 40 per cent were able to recoup the losses 'after five one-hour training sessions.

The findings are' important because in studies

of later adulthood the assumption has been that decline is irreversible, said researcher Sherry Willis, a human development associate professor at Pennsylvania State University. The study was conducted from 1983 to 1985 by Willis and K. Warner Schaie. Their results will be published later this year in the journal Developmental Psychology, Willis said.

Inductive reasoning, the ability to see relationships or make inferences, is used to comprehend what you read, such as directions on a medicine bottle.

Spatial orientation, the ability to comprehend two or three-dimensional objects, is necessary for reading road maps or following instructions for assembling furniture. Researchers have found that on the average these two cognitive skills show an earlier decline, beginning in the mid-60s, than other skills and therefore give researchers a larger sample population, Willis said.

“I think a number of people that we trained were fearful . . . that they were experiencing early signs of Alzheimer’s (disease), and training

convinced them that they could still learn, that it was not an inevitable kind of loss,” said Willis. Some suggestions for regaining the skills include working crossword puzzles or playing word games for inductive reasoning, and woodworking or intricate needlepoint for spatial orientation. The 229 people studied, who ranged in age from 62 to 94, had been tested in 1970 as part of Schaie’s s larger longitudinal study. Based on a comparison of results from standardised tests of the two cognitive skills from 1970 and prior to the training,

Willis found that about 60 per cent had declined, and the rest remained stable. After the five one-hour training sessions, 40 per cent of those who had regressed had returned to 1970 levels, and about half improved significantly on the post-training cognitive skills tests, she said. Willis also found that of the 40 per cent whose abilities had remained stable about half were able to improve their scores over 1970 levels. Associated Press