Canadian scientists have found a method to help aging people get less forgetful by improving their cognitive abilities through well-designed training.Everyone experiences some degree of memory loss and cognitive decline as they get older.The decline usually becomes noticeable after 50,when people may find it slightly more difficult to focus on tasks,organize everyday jobs and remember how to do things in the right order. A team of psychologists in Toronto created a strategy of cognitive training to help people preserve these abilities."Our primary emphasis was on improving the use of general strategic abilities because they are particularly weak to the aging process,"Dr.Donald Stuss,director of the study,said in a press release.The team examined 49 healthy older adults with normal cognitive decline.All of the participants were between the ages of 71 and 87.Over the course of 12 weeks,psychologists taught them methods to improve their strategic abilities.Afterwards,researchers saw a 15 to 40 percent improvement in the memories of all participants."Over a period of six months their improvement not only maintained,but increased,"said Dr.Gordon Winocur,coordinator of the study.The 12-week course was broken up into three four-week sections,focusing on a different skill involved in strategic abilities:memory,goal management and psychosocial function. The memory training emphasized how to preserve and recover information, while goal management focused on methods to lower the chance of memory slips.Psychosocial training was aimed at increasing the participants' confidence in their mental abilities. "We wanted to develop a cognitive training program that would produce improvement over a  ly short period of time,so participants could benefit more on that while they're still functional and slow down the rate of decline,"said Winocur."If we can work with people in the early stages of cognitive decline,then we can slow down the rate of this decline and help them maintain a higher level of function for a longer period of time." According to the psychologists,what causes the bad memory when a man becomes old?
Forgetfulness. General strategic abilities. Goal management. Psychosocial function.