Cognitive Aging Lab

Leave it to Bob. He was reading in the paper that there was a research project being conducted at the University of Texas - San Antonio, and if you participated they would pay you $20. Well Bob, Pat, and I decided to participate. As you can see it was a project studying the aged, and I guess we all qualified.

Each of us was put at a computer station to answer questions electronically. Here is Bob pondering the correct answer to this question.

Here's Pat after she was finished.

Here's Lucy after she finished.

The questions were designed to assess memory, the ability to multitask, and vocabulary. After we were finished, our brains were fried. Pat and I left the lab laughing our heads off because some of the questions were a little too close to the truth than we wanted. For instance there was a question, "Do you ever misplace items such as glasses?" Well this past week, that actually happened to Pat. Luckily we did find them. Another one was my perception of my ability to recall words presented. I was 100% sure that I could recall words they flashed on the screen. But then the reality was that I could only recall 2 out of 10 of them. Also there was a 3 task multitask section, and when I did that, I never even paid attention to the third task. I could do 2 tasks at a time, but not 3. But what was so funny was when there was a question about that task, I told the monitor that I never had done that task. She smiled. Then I realized I had not done the task at the same time as the other ones like I was supposed to. She probably died laughing inside at this old lady. Anyway we had a really good laugh. Does that help memory? You might as well laugh at yourself. Right?

Here we are with fried brains.

We loved this statue on the campus. Ole!!!!!!