ABSTRACT
This chapter presents information about memory and aging. When discussing memory impairment, memory is subdivided into two primary types – episodic memory (i.e. memory for personally experienced events) and semantic memory (i.e. memory for generic facts, knowledge, and beliefs). The chapter highlights how age does not affect both forms of memory in similar fashion. While people’s episodic memory declines for almost all people with age, semantic memory is often unaffected. A comprehensive listing of tools a clinician can offer a patient to cope with memory failure is presented, including how to educate a person to distinguish age-associated memory loss from more atypical forms of memory impairments and how to employ a variety of external memory aids.
