Senior moments” are those moments when something that I know, have known for years, like the model car I drive, just will not come to mind. Many of us seniors (those of many years of age, not like rocks or planets, but like people) get used to the experience of moving right along through a sentence when we are suddenly stopped by a memory failure.
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It is often a noun that will not come to mind. A deceased neighbor’s name or something else that you know, that you know you know, but that you can’t remember. I am interested in the coming to mind bit. I am guessing that a well-known name comes to mind in something like five minutes or less. I am not clear whether trying hard to recall or relaxing with focus still on the item to be remembered is better. I am also not clear if intentionally trying to recall works better or faster than intentionally distracting myself with a puzzle or a song or some such.
For many things, relaxation, little or no tension, helps but not always. I do know that getting angry with myself or with my head’s behavior is almost always not helpful. As a researcher, I am committed to the idea that being helpful should actually matter. It is not enough for one thing to be trivially better than another. For me, the margin of difference should be large enough to be noticeable. The margin of difference is usually called “the effect size”, the effect of trying or of relaxing.
