People Over 25 Are Twice As Distractible

Focus now.  This may be hard to remember, especially if you are over 25 and there are random distractions in the room.  Yes, it’s bad news: researchers at Rice University are convinced that “older people,” by which they mean people over 25, are nearly twice as likely as younger people, yes, younger than 25, to have their memory impaired by distractions such as irrelevant speech or written words.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, a Rice University news release reports that researchers tested the memory and cognitive function of 102 people between the ages of 18 and 32 (average age of 21) and 60 people between the ages of 64 and 82 (average age of 71).  When the participants were tested on remembering lists of words, the younguns remembered words on the list with an average accuracy of 81 percent while the “older people” came in at only 67 percent.  Wait, it gets worse.  When irrelevant words (that were supposed to be ignored) were introduced, the young test group’s accuracy dropped to 74 percent, but the accuracy of the old test group’s performance dropped to 46 percent.  Got that? 

Older people are nearly twice as likely as their younger counterparts to have their memory and cognitive processes impaired by environmental distraction – See more at: http://news.rice.edu/2014/07/14/older-adults-nearly-twice-as-likely-to-have-memories-affected-by-environmental-distractions/#sthash.M9Wnl1pX.dpuf

Older people are nearly twice as likely as their younger counterparts to have their memory and cognitive processes impaired by environmental distraction – See more at: http://news.rice.edu/2014/07/14/older-adults-nearly-twice-as-likely-to-have-memories-affected-by-environmental-distractions/#sthash.M9Wnl1pX.dpuf