Understanding Older Adults’ Health and Social Memory Needs in the Home

Understanding the role of environmental support that home offers and the measures older adults take to deal with memory issues can provide useful insights in the design of memory support systems. One of the main objectives of this research was to understand the nature and context of memory failures and successes older adults experience in the home. In particular we compared the specifics of memory issues within health and social domains and the strategies and support aids used to address those issues. Self-reports about memory functioning were gathered from 26 independently living older adults (65-80 years in age) through structured interviews and a memory questionnaire. Overall, more problems, more frequent forgetting, and less effective strategies were reported for remembering names and conversations compared to other social/interpersonal activities and health-related tasks. We infer that strategies and memory supports that work for prospective memory do not work as well for retrospective social tasks.

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