Mindful Attention to Variability in Everyday Memory

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Memory Lapse

In brief

Forgetfulness is a common complaint among middle and older adults, with the vast majority of these complaints not rooted in established causes or diagnoses. The contents of these subjective cognitive complaints (SCC) include difficulty retrieving specific words (e.g., names of people or places), misplacing common items (e.g., keys or eyeglasses), and prospective memory failures (e.g., forgetting appointments and reasons for entering a room). One study found that 54% of people in a sample composed of 15,000 adults over the age of 55 reported that they had some difficulty remembering things over the past year. In the subsample composed of individuals aged 85+, this figure increased to 62%. While some experiences of forgetting can be partially explained by age-related cognitive decline, problems with retrieval processes can be attributed to a host of other factors including stress and anxiety, lack of sleep, and side effects from medications. Even with all of these other possible aspects at play, older adults tend to attribute everyday instances of forgetting to uncontrollable factors including age. Moreover, while society tends to associate forgetting with the elderly population, young adults also report the experience of forgetting. There is reason to suspect that while older adults tend to experience more instances of forgetting than they did as younger adults, they also pay more attention to instances of forgetting, gathering evidence that they are declining. Every instance of forgetting can confirm that one is in the midst of decline. This process is a type of confirmation bias: Every time an older adult notices an instance of forgetting, he/she confirms that the self fits within the larger negative age stereotype. The present study investigates the Attention to Variability Paradigm. Specifically the participants will pay attention to how memory performance fluctuates throughout the day. Primary outcomes will be memory efficacy beliefs and memory performance on a telephone task.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT03949868

Run by

Harvard University

People needed

188

Starts

2018-08-30

Expected to finish

2025-04-10

Last updated by the study team

2026-04-21

Who can join

Age: 65 and older, up to 80. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Age: 65-80
• An expressed concern or anxiety about memory performance (Responding "YES" when asked if concerned about memory at all)
• Fluent in English
• Owns a smartphone

You may not qualify if…

• The presence of cognitive impairment (more than 2 incorrect responses) on the Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ), an instrument developed to assess cognitive functioning over the phone.
• The presence of any medical conditions that affect cognitive ability, such as stroke, acquired brain injury, dementia, and other neurological disorders or illnesses, or untreated hypertension.

Where it is running

• Harvard University — Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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