Philip D. Harvey, PhD Leonard M. Miller Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Miami, Florida
Vanessa Nascimento, MD, MPH PGY-1 Psychiatry Resident University of Miami/Jackson Health System Psychiatry Residency Training Program Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Miami, Florida
Disclosures Dr. Harvey has received consulting fees or travel reimbursements from Alkermes, Bio Excel, Boehringer Ingelheim, Intra-Cellular Therapies, Mindstrong Health, Minerva Pharma, Regeneron Pharma, Roche Pharma, Sunovion Pharma, Takeda Pharma, and Teva. He receives royalties from the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia. He is Chief Scientific Officer of i-Function, Inc. He has research grants from Takeda and the Stanley Medical Research Foundation. Dr. Nascimento reports no financial relationships with any companies whose products are mentioned in this article, or with manufacturers of competing products.
Procedural memory is memory for motor acts and sequences. For instance, remembering how to ride a bicycle is a procedural memory, as is the ability to perform motor acts in sequence, such as peeling, cutting, and cooking vegetables. Interestingly, procedural memory can be spared in individuals with major challenges in episodic memory, such as those with amnestic conditions or cortical dementia. Thus, it may be possible for people to continue to perform technology-based skills despite declines in episodic memory. Many current technological functional tasks have fixed sequences of events that, if remembered, can lead to increased efficiency and higher chances of success in performance of functional tasks.
Prospective memoryis the ability to remember to perform tasks in the future. This can include event-related tasks (eg, enter your password before trying to make a hotel reservation on a web site) or time-related tasks (eg, refill your prescriptions next Friday). Technology can actually facilitate prospective memory by providing reminders to individuals, such as alarms for appointments. However, prospective memory is required to initially set up such alarms, and setting up confusing or incorrect alarms can impede task performance.
Processing speedis the ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks under time constraints. Traditional processing speed tasks include coding and sorting tasks, which require processing new information and effort for relatively short periods of time. In our research, we discovered that processing speed measured with traditional tests was strongly correlated with the time required to perform functional tasks such as an ATM banking task.2,3 This correlation makes sense in terms of the fact that many real-world functional tasks with technology often have a series of sequential demands that must be accomplished before progression to the next task.
Manual dexterityis also important for using technology. Many electronic devices have small, touch screen-based keyboards. Being able to touch the correct key requires dexterity and can be made more difficult by age-related vision changes, a tremor, or reduced sensation in extremities.
Cognitive changes and aging
It is normal for certain cognitive abilities to change with aging. There are a set of cognitive skills that are generally stable from early adulthood until the early “senescent” period. Some of these skills decline normatively after age 60 to 65, or earlier in some individuals. These include processing new information, solving new problems, and learning and remembering information. Referred to as “fluid intelligence,” these abilities show age-related decline during healthy aging, and even greater decline in individuals with age-related cognitive conditions.
