 Using tasks that require subects to recall locations of Xs in a grid, Sandra Hale, Ph.D, associate professor of psychology in Arts.& Sciences, has found that age affects spatial working memory to a greater extent than verbal working memory. |
By Trent Stockton
Sandra Hale, Ph.D., can help make our lives a lot easier, especially since we're not getting any younger.
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.
About half of Hale's research collaborations are with her husband, Joel Myerson, Ph.D., research professor in the psychology department. "We were research collaborators before we were married partners," Hale said. "I was working in his lab as a computer programmer, and that's how we met." They were married in the fall of 1984.
As a teacher, Hale's primary responsibility is a course in developmental psychology. In addition to an understanding of basic techniques and concepts, students complete the class with a firm grounding in how nature and nurture (i.e., genetic and environmental influences) interact.
This is becoming increasingly important as our understanding of the human genome advances. Hale said of her students, "I hope that for the rest of their lives if they pick up The New York Times science section and see a story on the development of some aspect of human behavior, that they will be able to say, 'Oh, I know what this is about.' And then proceed to expand their knowledge."
Hale is an advocate for the use of technology in teaching. She has recently put her course content on the Web, providing students with relevant concepts and visual images to be covered in upcoming lectures. By making these materials available on the Web, she said, students are better able to grasp what's important.
"Students ask questions more easily, and they don't have to suffer while I draw lame pictures of experimental procedures on the board --many students could not discern a dog from a horse in my drawings," Hale said.
But she doesn't reproduce her course notes on the Web because she believes students remember material better when they encode it in different ways (seeing it, hearing it and writing it down).
"We aim to educate people about how human participants should be treated in research," Hale said.
In addition to making research safer for both scientists and human volunteers, Hale has helped streamline the process by spearheading the development of a Web site, updating necessary forms and keeping up with policy changes.
"I take my hat off to her for what she's done with the HHSC," said Martha Storandt, Ph.D., professor of psychology and director of the Aging and Development Program at the University. "She's done more to protect human subjects used in scientific research on the Hilltop Campus than anyone else. At the same time, she's made it much more efficient to conduct studies involving humans."
Since 1992, Hale also has been involved in the recruitment of new freshmen, answering general questions about psychology and discussing research opportunities for undergraduates in the social sciences. In addition to postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, she has two or three undergraduates working in her lab each year. Eighty percent of the undergraduates working in Hale's lab have published their results in scientific journals.
"I think the chance to participate in research is one of Washington University's greatest strengths for undergraduates," Hale said.
In 1998, the New York Academy of Sciences recognized Hale as an outstanding mentor when her graduate student, Astrid Fry, won the prestigious James McKeen Cattell award for the year's outstanding dissertation in psychology. The dissertation focused on the role of processing speed and working memory in higher-reasoning abilities in children. The results provided evidence for a developmental cascade similar to the one observed in Hale's studies of older adults.
Hale has always assumed that getting bored is the worst thing that could happen to a person. So in addition to her research, teaching and University service, she's been making jewelry --bracelets, earrings and necklaces --in her spare time for the past seven years.
"I love my work, but you have to have some art to balance out all that analytical
science," she said. "I like patterns and repeating themes, and my jewelry-making
is a great way to express these."
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