Implicit Learning in Healthy Aging

Abstract The past fifty years have yielded substantial advances in understanding the aging mind and brain. This chapter focuses on three themes that have emerged. (1) Some cognitive abilities decline with adult age, but others do not. (2) Brain regions differ in the extent of age-related decline, and old brains often perform functions differently from younger ones, reflecting lifelong neural plasticity. (3) It is possible to modify some age-related declines. Much of this research has focused on explicit learning and memory. This chapter considers whether these themes apply to the aging of implicit, statistical sequence learning. It presents evidence, some limited, that all three themes apply. Future progress requires that measures of implicit learning be included in large-scale longitudinal correlational and intervention studies. Research on the aging of implicit learning and memory needs to be more integrated with the burgeoning research on promoting successful aging.