Memory Confidence Can Be Learned: What 127 Older Adults Found in an Online Course

There is a particular kind of quiet that follows a forgotten name. You stand there, the word almost in reach, and somewhere underneath the embarrassment a second, colder thought arrives: is this the beginning of something? Most people over sixty know that thought. Fewer people say it out loud, which is exactly the problem a group of Australian researchers set out to study.

Their question was not whether memory can be improved. It was whether confidence in memory can be improved, and whether doing it online, among strangers, is enough.

What the researchers did

The study, published this year in the Journal of Aging Research by a team from La Trobe University and several other Australian universities, drew on a larger programme called OPTIMiSE, a six-module online memory course for people aged sixty and over who had noticed their own memory slipping. The modules covered how memory works, how normal ageing differs from dementia, practical memory strategies and lifestyle changes. Participants had eight weeks to work through roughly two hours of material per module, at whatever pace suited them, and after each module they were asked to post on a moderated discussion board about what they had tried.

Before and after the course, participants rated their confidence in their memory, in everyday situations such as remembering names, and completed a questionnaire about how much control they felt they had over their memory, including whether they believed decline was inevitable and whether they expected to develop Alzheimer's disease. The analysis covered the 127 people who completed both sets of questionnaires. Their average age was 72, and most were women.

What changed

Confidence rose. On a scale from zero to ten, average confidence in overall memory went from 6.28 before the course to 7.28 afterwards. Confidence in specific everyday situations moved from 6.14 to 7.03. In research terms these are medium-sized changes, and the same size of change appeared on both measures.

Beliefs about control shifted too. After the course, participants were less likely to see memory decline as unavoidable, less convinced that Alzheimer's disease was coming for them, more confident that strategies could help, and less inclined to think they needed other people to manage their memory for them. The one belief that barely moved was about effort: participants did not become more convinced that trying harder was the answer. The authors suggest people may have accepted that memory can improve while still feeling that the effort involved is considerable.

Then there is the part that speaks most directly to that quiet moment after a forgotten name. Asked about the discussion boards, 84 percent of participants agreed that it was reassuring to read about other people's memory difficulties and failures. Seventy percent said they felt less anxious about their memory after reading what others had written. Yet only about half felt that a real sense of community had formed. People said the boards were slow, that replies came too late to feel like conversation, and that face-to-face contact could not be replaced. The reassurance came through anyway.

What this does not show

This is where an honest reading matters. There was no comparison group. Everyone took the course, so the study cannot separate the effect of the course from the effect of time, attention, or simply being asked the same questions twice. Confidence rose alongside the course; the study does not prove the course caused it.

The 127 completers were drawn from 357 people who started. The 230 who dropped out, often citing time and technical difficulties, might well have rated the course less warmly, so the results describe the people who stuck with it. Those people were also, by the authors' own account, unusually well educated and comfortable with computers, recruited largely through University of the Third Age groups. The confidence measure was newly designed for this study, and nobody tested whether participants' actual memory performance changed, or whether the gains lasted beyond the final questionnaire. Every outcome was self-reported.

None of this makes the study worthless. It makes it a first step, and the authors present it as one.

Why it is still worth your attention

The interesting idea here is not the course. It is the direction of the arrow. We tend to assume that memory worries follow memory decline. The research the authors build on suggests the arrow also points the other way: people who believe their memory is failing avoid situations that depend on it, stop using strategies, get anxious when they have to remember something, and then forget more, which confirms the belief. Confidence is not a decoration on top of memory. It is part of the machinery.

That gives you something to do that costs nothing. Say the forgotten name out loud. Tell the person opposite you that it will come back in a minute. Ask a friend your age whether they lose words too, and listen to the relief in their answer. The single most valued thing in this study was not a technique or a lesson but the discovery that other people were struggling with the same things. That discovery is available offline, at any dinner table, for free.

Keeping an eye on your own thinking

At Treeny we build short daily exercises for adults over fifty, and Flo, our coach, keeps track of how your results move over weeks rather than on any one day. Part of the reason is exactly what this study describes: the impression you form of your memory on one bad morning is a poor guide to how it is actually doing. A steady record, gathered calmly over time, is a better one, and it tends to be kinder than the story you tell yourself.

Source: Dao, Duy P., et al. "A Mixed-Methods Investigation of the Role of Sense of Community on Older Adults' Memory Self-Efficacy and Control Beliefs Following an Online Group Memory Intervention." Journal of Aging Research, 2026. PMC13392815.

A note

This article describes published research and is not medical advice. A single study without a comparison group is a contribution to the evidence, not a conclusion. If changes in your memory worry you, or if forgetting is getting in the way of daily life, speak to your doctor, who knows your history and can tell you whether anything needs a closer look.