Raincharm’s Weblog

Every 7 years I am involved in a study known as the Seattle Longitudinal Study. This started at Penn State in 1956. (Why Penn State & Seattle? I don’t know, and just this past year the primary research has shifted to the U of Washington) Every 7 years they test a large number of people. They give them the same tests each time, exactly the same test. Using the test booklets from 1956 (new answer sheets). The study is aimed at how our brains age. The tests today included addition, matching lists of numbers, antonyms, synonyms, shape recognition (which shapes are the same as the original, when they are rotated (the wrong ones are rotated and flipped), flexibility of the brain checked by writing exactly what is written in a paragraph following all of the capitalization (that doesn’t follow normal rules sometimes), and then writing it again, except switching lower case and capital. There are time limits on everything, and you are not expected to finish. 2-1/2 hours on a weekend, two weekends in a row, every 7 years. I had done this in 1991, 1998 and 2005. It has only been 3-1/2 years since the last round, but they are adding a midlife section that occurs more frequently. They track your results over time. In 2005 I was in a room with someone who was on their 7th or 8th go round. I can always count on a Birthday card from this group, as they try to keep track of where people go over the years. 

After the testing session this AM Carl came by so we could take our walk. I was about 3-1/2 miles north of our house, so this would give us an opportunity to get further from home in some direction. We chose west – to the Puget Sound, dipped a finger in the water, and back again. 9 miles total. We started by going past the mall, through multi-family and then single-family neighborhoods, got lost in a cemetary (could not find a back entrance so traversed out the front again), down a winding road to Carkeek Park, out to the beach, back following a trail through the park, lunch at QFC (grocery store), past the second house we lived in in Seattle (rental), and back east to the starting point. A few of the sights around Carkeek follow.

This entry was posted on February 14, 2009 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.