We've heard that variety is the spice of life, and now a new study finds that it also may be the key to supercharge learning and enhance working memory for people over the age of 60. Researchers discovered that varied practice, not repetition, primed older adults to learn a new working memory task, according to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign news release.
Instead of focusing on just solving crossword puzzles, the researchers suggest that a diverse mental workout leads to a sharper mind than mere repetition of the same kind of mental training, says Study Finds.
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“People often think that the best way to get better at something is to simply practice it over and over again, but robust skill learning is actually supported by variation in practice,” said lead researcher Elizabeth A.L. Stine-Morrow, a professor in the Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois.
The study divided 90 men and women, ages 60 to 87, into four groups that offered different mental workout programs. The idea was to see how these workouts affected working memory, the ability to follow complex conversations while formulating thoughts or remembering a phone number while searching for an address. This ability tends to decline as we age.
At the beginning of the study, researchers assessed each person’s reading span: their ability to remember information while reading about something totally unrelated. This established each person’s current working memory. Then, the four groups were trained on one of four practice regimens: the reading span task itself, a new working memory activity, multiple working memory activities and a control task unrelated to memory.
At the end of two weeks all the study subjects spent another two weeks on a standard working memory task called a complex reading span that involved a primary and secondary memory test.
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The eye-opening results showed that the group that engaged in the most diverse set of working memory exercises ultimately improved their performance by 75% more than the other groups, says Study Finds. The diverse training group continued to improve dramatically, according to researchers.
“Mixed practice did not directly lead to better performance; it led to better learning,” noted Stine-Morrow. “That group was the slowest to improve on the reading span task, but they ultimately reached the highest peak.”
Experts note the current brain training programs focus on repeating one skill set. This new research reveals that a more diverse cognitive workout could have better long-term benefits for maintaining or even improving our mental capacities as we age.
While more research is needed to fully investigate and understand why this works, the takeaway message from this study is that variety is not only the spice of life but could be the answer to maintaining memory and learning function as we age. The study results appeared in the journal Intelligence.