| Sandra Hale |
Media Assistance:
 Gerry Everding Dir. of News and Electronic Communications gerry_everding@wustl.edu (314) 935-5230 |
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Hale, associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, has contributed significantly to understanding how our brains process information and how this changes across the life span.
"Sandy's research is of fundamental importance in understanding how conscious mental activity is affected by the process of aging," said Henry L. Roediger, Ph.D., chair and James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychology.
Two aspects of normal everyday thinking are central to Hale's research: speed of processing --how quickly we process basic information from our environment; and working memory --the ability to retain information, such as the amount of a restaurant bill, for a brief time and to then manipulate this information, such as calculating the proper tip.
Speed-of-processing and working-memory investigations in Hale's lab have shown that differences between younger and older adults are a matter of degree.
"Older adults may take longer to process the same information and may make more errors, but we see no evidence that older adults are doing things differently than younger adults," Hale said. "Our research suggests that normal aging does not result in qualitative changes in thinking, which is a finding that we hope people find reassuring."
Hale and her colleagues have also found that aging affects verbal cognition to a much lesser extent than spatial cognition. For speed of processing, Hale designed experiments to measure the amount of time needed to complete both verbal and spatial tasks. A verbal task involves decisions about words, such as determining whether two words are from the same category. Are shovel and rake both tools? Are carrot and milk both vegetables?
A spatial task involves decisions about shapes and/or locations. Examples include visual search tasks where subjects search for a red circle (the target) among a field of red squares and blue circles.
The results of these processing speed studies show that as we age, although there is both verbal and spatial slowing, spatial processing is affected to a much greater extent. Using working memory tasks that require subjects to either recall a list of letters or recall locations of X's in a grid, Hale has found that age also affects spatial working memory to a greater extent than verbal working memory.
There also seems to be a cascade of effects beginning with the general slowing of processing speed.
Hale holds her granddaughter, Samantha.
"As we get older, we get slower," Hale said. "Getting slower reduces our working memory capacity, and we tend to jumble things up more frequently. This, in turn, affects our higher-level reasoning and intellectual abilities, especially in the spatial domain."
The good news, Hale points out, is much of our daily life depends on processing verbal information, and this domain is the least affected by aging.
Hale's findings have important implications for understanding what happens when we age and how to deal with those changes.
"Sandy's work on aging and cognition has many ramifications for psychology and for the daily lives of aging adults," Roediger said.
Hale is exploring the applied aspects of her research, including how speed of processing and working memory are affected by Alzheimer's disease. With her colleagues in psychology and the Central Institute for the Deaf, she is developing a method to examine the effectiveness of training programs in improving the conversational fluency of hearing-impaired older adults. She is also looking into the gambling behaviors of older adults in casinos to determine whether working memory has a role in risky decision-making.
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