Eighth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

TTIYM has been designed in response to older adult’s concerns about memory efficiency and the potential deterioration to dementia. TTIYM brings together several fields of psychology aiming to create and validate a memory training program that is effective, generalizable, and inexpensive enough to be offered in the community. The two main themes behind the program are simple and generalizable memory strategies (self-testing and spaced-retrieval) and building participant’s memory self-efficacy. These two themes are not only in what is taught to the participant’s but also in the structure of the program. The program itself requires two three-hour sessions (a week apart) followed by regular reminders to use the strategies for the four weeks following the second session. This study measures the effectiveness and generalizability of the training by using tasks, which apart from one, are not covered in the training program. The exception is only spoken about and not practised in the program. The task themselves include name-face, text learning, and place learning because of their ecological validity. As the training focuses on strategies that only require cognition, if successful, the program can be modified to suit cognitively healthy older adults that have other health issues such as blindness.