Attentiveness and response to circumstances are said to significantly vary with age. Older people are characterized by a slower response to circumstances as compared to younger individuals. Research has established that the older category of people is not likely to register a response as fast as young people would. The function of the brain that involves the processing of information is also realized to be gradually impaired as people grow old. With this in mind, older people are expected to have difficulty in solving problems especially if they are not very familiar with the problems.
A decline in the expected processing capacity implies that older people are forced to put more attention to tasks to come up with solutions. As a result, there is a reduced efficiency in performance as people advance in age. The poor processing ability of the older category of people which is being explained by factors such as divided attention experienced by the older generations as compared to the younger generations due to responsibilities in life as well as engagements of the brain that derails the processing of information is, therefore, a major factor influencing how age difference affects responses to emergencies.
Based on the above information, old age limits on driving privileges should be upheld. This is because old age is associated with inefficiencies that can be dangerous in some driving conditions. Screening of drivers should thus be based on practical routine checks on processing ability.
Identification of the difference between normal and abnormal memory changes
Though memory changes are realized in life as people advance in age, the changes can either be normal or abnormal. One of the ways by which the two memory changes can be distinguished from each other is by examining the effect induced in the life of a person. A change in memory that affects the daily life of an individual to the extent of forgetting very basic things such as the place of residence is classified as abnormal memory changes. The other changes which are mild and do not have an effect of making a person forget the basic things in his/her life are said to be normal memory changes.
Examples of things that people can forget
Being the basis of distinguishing between normal and abnormal changes in memory, the things that people forget are associated with the two mutually exclusive categories. Examples of things that can be forgotten normally include forgetting other people’s names or specifications that had been earlier on described, for instance, items to be bought from a shop. Abnormal forgetting is on the other hand associated with forgetfulness of things that have been part of a person’s life such as where a person stays or the identity of a person’s spouse. Such is considered abnormal as they affect information that had been permanently stored.
Stereotypes about memory performance in older adults
Memory performance of older adults has been generally perceived to be poor as compared to that of younger people. One of the facts about poor memory among older people is its association with the encoding process. The fact that adults do not optimally engage in encoding is however refuted to be a factor of memory loss.
Daily performance of older adults on memory and list learning task
The performance of the older adults is thus realized to be poor as compared to that of younger people due to poor encoding and slower response.