Daily Mail

Lost your keys again? Just start paying attention!

- By Victoria Allen Science Correspond­ent

YOU may curse your memory when you lose your keys for the umpteenth time.

But forgetfuln­ess is not completely to blame. Instead, older people who find themselves losing things more frequently probably just did not pay enough attention when they put them down.

Ginny Smith, presenter of an event called Mastering Memory at the Cheltenham Science Festival, said we need to focus less on recalling memories than storing them to begin with. It means the best advice when dropping your keys somewhere at the end of the day is to make up a little poem about their location.

If that seems like too much hard work, just concentrat­e without any distractio­ns on where you put them. The science radio presenter and Cambridge graduate, speaking after the event, said: ‘Recent studies are now very much suggesting that older people are not more likely to lose their keys and other items not just because they have a bad memory, but also because of a lack of attention.

‘This is usually because people walk into a room on the phone or with a bag of shopping, for example, and just throw them down. It is not that they can then not retrieve the memory, it is that they never stored it in the first place.’

She cites evidence published in the journal Psychology and Aging, which found older people have fewer resources for processing attention. Speaking before the workshop, Miss Smith said: ‘We know the brain is very good at rememberin­g rhyme so a poem might help. An example is “I will not forget my keys any more, I left them on the table by the door”.’

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom