Dimentia, Avoiding It, and Toddler/Preschool Education

This article discusses an emerging study of the very old (90+) living in a large retirement community in Los Angeles. The study details the "super memory club", that is, the 1 in 200 people over the age of 90 who have no diagnosable dimentia symptoms. Give the article a read.

The article suggests, as does the research, that many of the people in the community keep their memories sharp by playing bridge with one another every day. Now, ignoring that bridge is a really boring game and I hate it, I think this is significant, because it immediately reminded me of toddler and preschool education techniques known as "High/Scope" developed by Jean Piaget in the 1960's, which has been tested and proven time and time again as a good way to teach young children to read, write, think, and plan effectively.

One of the major structural techniques of High/Scope is the Plan-Do-Review concept. Children gather with the teacher, who gives them a basic idea of their next activity. Children are then encouraged to plan their own individual way of executing the project, like if they are told "now let's all paint something", the children might then each be asked "what are you going to paint? What colors are you going to use?"
The children then do their activity, be it painting, role-playing, building, singing, writing...anything. At the end of do time, the children clean up their projects and gather back with the teacher, who then asks them questions about their projects, and even asks them what they think of each other's projects. This constitutes review time, where the children learn to recall, analyze and discuss their and their peers work, as well as plan for the next time they do a similar activity.

How is this any different than old people playing bridge? Bridge is a difficult card game where four people work in two pairs to defeat the other pair.
Plan time would constitute the initial analysis of the cards. The player then "plans" how many tricks they can take and makes a bid based on that plan. They also plan how they will work with their partner, whose cards they cannot see, based on how aggressively they and their partner both bid.
Do time would be the actual execution of a round, where players work with each other, try desperately to remember which cards have been played, and basically try to earn as many, if not more, tricks as they bid plus their partner's bid.
Review time is immediately after the round, when the four players talk about, and analyze the round, discussing a specific trick, or the players that might have bust, etc. They also discuss, based on their score, their plan to win, or their plan to crush the opposing partnership.

Well, you get the basic idea. So when I read that article, it came as no surprise to me that following the basic model of a highly successful toddler/preschool education program that develops critical thinking skills and prepares children for Kindergarten would also work as a successful method for the elderly to retain those very skills. But in this case the painting of preschoolers has become card games for the elderly.


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