What’s the best way to improve your memory as you age? Turns out, it depends, a new study suggests. But your fourth-grade math teacher may have been onto something with that phrase to help you remember how to work out a complicated problem: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
A new study led by researchers from the University of Michigan and Penn State College of Medicine compared two approaches for people with an early form of memory loss.
The two are mnemonic strategy training, which aims to connect what someone is trying to remember to something else like a word, phrase or song (such as the Dear Aunt Sally mnemonic), and spaced retrieval training, which gradually increases the amount of time between tests of remembering something.
People with mild cognitive impairment, which can but does not always lead to a later Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis, were better able to remember…
