Centre for Scaffolding the Ageing Mind

Enhancing the cognitive capacities of older adults by studying how the mind is supported by internal and external resources

The Centre for Scaffolding the Ageing Mind is a Faculty of Human Sciences Research Centre at Macquarie University that brings together researchers who study everyday cognitive support systems that may benefit older adults and people with dementia.

In our daily lives, we employ a variety of resources outside our mind to enhance our cognitive functioning in areas like memory, attention, decision-making, and sense-of-self. These resources can be psychological, bodily, material, technological, or social in nature. These varied resources make up the broader system in which a person’s mind functions, and serve as scaffolds of this functioning. While scaffolding may aid cognition for everyone, across the lifespan, it could be particularly beneficial for older adults experiencing cognitive decline and the pathological cognitive decline seen in dementia.

Understanding how cognition is scaffolded by these diverse resources will underpin the development of interventions that target cognitive decline in older adults and people with dementia.

The Centre aims to investigate three major areas of cognitive scaffolding:

• social (from other people)
• embodied (from skilled activities and practices)
• psychological (from one's own internal resources)