The effectiveness of rehabilitation of cognitive-metacognitive strategies on visual memory and memory span in the elderly

Aging is associated with a decrease in various cognitive functions, including memory, and changes in memory function which are not uniform and vary depending on different aspects of memory. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of rehabilitation of cognitive-metacognitive strategies on visual memory and memory span in the elderly. The present research method was quasi-experimental pretest-posttest with a control group. The population included all the elderly who lived in the nursing home of Bukan from May to August 2019 (N = 120). Among these people, 30 elderly people (two groups of 15 people) were selected by convenience sampling according to the inclusion criteria and were placed by random assignment into two groups; experimental and control groups. Kim Karad and Wechsler’s memory span tests were performed on the groups in the pre-test. Then, the rehabilitation of cognitive-metacognitive strategies was performed and in the next stage, the post-test was performed again. The obtained data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance according to its assumptions. The results showed that after performing cognitive-metacognitive rehabilitation in the experimental group, the mean of straight and reverse components of the memory span test and short, medium, and tall components of the visual memory test increased significantly compared to the pretest (p < .001). The results showed that rehabilitation of cognitive-metacognitive strategies can improve visual memory and memory span, and using rehabilitation methods is suggested to improve cognitive functions and memory in the elderly.