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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Social networking giant Facebook has become the tool of choice for many researchers who are studying everything from child psychology to cognitive decline. On the cognitive end, one new study has shown adults over the age of 65 may get an intellectual boost if they learn to use the popular social site.

When it comes to sharpening those cognitive skills, University of Arizona graduate student Janelle Wohltmann says Facebook may be the way to go. The department of psychology researcher set out to see whether teaching older adults to use the social network could help improve cognitive performance and make them feel more socially connected.

Sharing her findings at the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) Annual Meeting in Hawaii this month, Wohltmann showed the over-65 group performed about 25 percent better on tasks designed to measure ability to continuously monitor and quickly add or delete the contents of their working memory (known as updating) after they learned to use Facebook.

Wohltmann facilitated the Facebook training for 14 older adults who had either never used the social networking site or only used it less than once a month. The study participants were asked to become friends only with the other participants in the study and were asked to post status updates at least once per day.

In a second group, Wohltmann taught 14 seniors who had not previously used Facebook to use an online diary (Penzu.com) to keep a private record of their daily activities. They were also asked to keep entries short (no more than five sentences) to emulate the typical length of updates generally posted on Facebook.

Wohltmann then told a third group of 14 seniors they were on a wait-list to receive Facebook training, but were only used as a control for the study and never received training.

The adults in all three groups ranged in age from 68 to 91 (average age 79) and completed a series of questionnaires and neuropsychological tests to evaluate social variables, including loneliness, social support, and cognitive abilities. After the eight-week-long study, these questions and tests were repeated.

Wohltmann and colleagues, whom included research adviser Betty Glisky, professor and head of the department of psychology at Arizona, found, through the follow-ups, those who had learned to use Facebook performed about 25 percent better than they did at the start of the study on their updating abilities; she found no significant change in either of the two other groups.

The preliminary findings offer a plausible link between social connectedness and cognitive performance.

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Senior Citizens Who Use Facebook Have Improved Cognition