The UCCS Gerontology Center sponsors a seminar series for students, faculty, and community members. Today, David McCabe, Ph.D. of Colorado State University presented the results of a study on memory and executive functioning across the lifespan.
Dr. McCabe used the analogy, "age is to memory as time is to rust." Basically, age does not cause memory loss, rather memory loss is caused by some underlying variable (associated with age). A few hypotheses for why episodic memory (memory for events) decines with age include reduced working memory capacity, processing speed, executive function, and general fluid intelligence.
The findings of Dr. McCabe's study suggest that tests of executive function and working memory capacity measure a common construct, which he calls "Executive Attention." Executive attention was found to be more closely related to episodic memory than processing speed or general fluid intelligence, implying that problems with episodic memory are due to executive dysfunction in older adults.