Memory Games for Seniors

Three games, three kinds of remembering

"Memory" covers several different jobs, and they do not slip at the same rate. Remembering where you put something is one job. Noticing that something has changed is another. Bringing back a list with nothing to prompt you is a third, and it is usually the one people notice first. Each game here works one of them.

None of the three has a clock. You look as long as you want and press the button when you are ready, and a wrong answer simply goes grey so you can try another. If the list will not come back, there is a Peek button, and using it is not cheating. It is the same as glancing at the paper in your pocket.

Why the shopping list feels harder than the others

Picking the missing picture from three choices is recognition: the answer is in front of you and you only have to know it when you see it. The shopping list is recall, which means pulling the words out with nothing to hang them on, and recall is harder at every age. That is also why forgetting a name and then knowing it the moment someone says it is so common. The memory was there all along. Getting to it was the hard part.

Three tricks help with lists, and you can try them right here:

• Group it. Milk, cheese and butter are one trip to the fridge, not three separate things. Five items in two groups is easier than five loose ones.
• Make a picture. Imagine the items piled up somewhere silly, eggs balanced on a loaf of bread. Odd images stick better than plain words.
• Say it out loud. Reading the list aloud before you hide it gives you a second way in: you heard it as well as saw it.

What playing will and will not do

You will get better at these games. That part is reliable, and it is satisfying to watch the turns in Pairs come down over a week. Whether it spills over into the rest of life is less clear. The largest study, the ACTIVE trial in the United States, gave around 2,800 people over 65 ten sessions of memory, reasoning or speed training. The memory group did better on memory tests afterwards, but by the ten year follow-up that advantage had faded, while the reasoning and speed groups still showed some benefit.

So the honest case for memory games is not that they prevent anything. It is that a quarter of an hour of something absorbing, with a bit of effort in it, is a good way to spend a quarter of an hour, especially if you play with someone. The habits with better evidence behind them for keeping the brain in shape are walking and other exercise, getting hearing checked and using hearing aids if they are needed, keeping blood pressure under control, and seeing people.

When forgetting is worth mentioning to a doctor

Everyone forgets things, and more so with age. Losing your glasses, walking into a room and wondering why, or needing a moment for a name are ordinary. It is worth talking to your doctor when forgetting starts to change how daily life goes: getting lost somewhere familiar, asking the same question several times in one conversation, struggling with something done a hundred times before, like a favourite recipe or paying a bill, or when family members are noticing more than you are. A game cannot tell you which side of that line you are on, and these games make no attempt to.

Playing with someone else

If you are setting this up for a parent or grandparent, a tablet on the table between you works better than a phone. Take turns in Pairs: you will both remember cards the other turned over, and it becomes a conversation. Shopping list is good to do together with one person reading the list out loud. If a round is going badly, drop to level 1, finish it, and stop on a good note. The finish screen is there to be seen.