Memory and Age - IELTS Reading Answers

The Academic Reading module of the IELTS can be the top-scoring category with diligent practice of passages like ‘Memory and Age’ and other IELTS Reading recent actual tests. To achieve the best results in this section, you must understand how to approach and answer the different question types in IELTS Academic Reading.

There are 14 questions in the passage, Memory and Age. The question types found are:

• IELTS Reading Multiple Choice Question (Q. 14-17)
• IELTS Reading Summary Completion (Q. 18-23)
• IELTS Reading Matching Features (Q. 24-27)

Reading Passage

Memory and Age

Questions 14-17

14 What does the typist’s experiment show in the passage?

A Old people reading ability is superior

B Losses of age are irreversible

C Seasoned tactics made elders more efficient

D Old people performed poorly in driving test

15 Which is correct about the rat experiment?

A Different toys have different effects on rats

B Rat’s brain weight increased in both cages.

C Isolated rat’s brain grows new connections

D Boring and complicated surroundings affect brain development

16 What can be concluded in the chess game of a children’s group?

A They won games with adults.

B Their organization of chess knowledge is better

C Their image memory is better than adults

D They used a different part of the brain when choosing

17 What is the author’s purpose of using “vocabulary study” at the end of the passage?

A Certain people are sensitive to vocabulary while others aren’t

B Teachers and professionals won by their experience

C Vocabulary memory as a crystallized intelligence is hard to decline

D Old people use their special zone of the brain when studying

Questions 18-23

It’s long been known that______18_______ declined with age. Charles A. Dana foundation invested millions of dollars to test memory decline. They used advanced technology, neurochemical experiments and ran several cognitive and_______19_______ experiments. Bahrick called one form” _______20_______ “, which describes factual knowledge. Another one called “21“contains events in time and space format. He conducted two experiments on knowledge memory’s longevity, he asked 1000 candidates for some knowledge of_______22_______, some could even remember it decades ago. Second research of Spanish courses found that multiple course participants could remember more than half of _______23_______ they learned after decades, whereas a single course taker only remembered as short as 3 years.

Questions 24-27

A Harry P. Bahrick

B Arnold B. Scheibel

C Marion Diamond

D Timothy Salthouse

E Stanley Rapport

F Robert Kail

24 Examined both young and old’s blood circulation of brain while testing,

25 Aging is a significant link between physical and mental activity.

26 Some semantic memories of an event fade away by repetition.

26 Rat’s brain developed when put in a diverse environment.

Answers of Memory and Age Reading Answers With Location and Explanations

Let’s now review the answers to the questions from the passage in the reading section of IELTS Academic, Memory and Age, and assess your improvement.

14 Answer: C

Question type: Multiple choice question

Answer location: Paragraph C, lines 5-8

Answer explanation: “The older typists, it turned out, achieved their speed with cunning little strategies that made them far more efficient than their younger counterparts: They made fewer finger movements, saving a fraction of a second here and there. They also read ahead in the text.” This clearly states that the older people were able to outperform the younger participants by the use of tactful strategies at typing.

15 Answer: D

Question type: Multiple choice question

Answer location: Paragraph D, lines 1-4

Answer explanation: “‘When a rat is kept in isolation without playmates or objects to interact with, the animal’s brain shrinks, but if we put that rat with 11 other rats in a large cage and give them an assortment of wheels, ladders, and other toys, we can show–after four days– significant differences in its brain,” says Diamond, professor of integrative biology.” Thus this suggests that the rat’s brain got affected by the environment around it.

16 Answer: B

Question type: Multiple choice question

Answer location: Paragraph I, lines 6-12

Answer explanation: “A group of adult novice chess players was compared with a group of child experts at the game. In tests of their ability to remember a random series of numbers, the adults, as expected, outscored the children. But when asked to remember the patterns of chess pieces arranged on a board, the children won. “Because they’d played a lot of chess, their knowledge of chess was better organized than that of the adults, and their existing knowledge of chess served as a framework for new memory,” explains Kail.” This suggests that owing to the better-organized knowledge of chess, the kids outperformed the adults.

17 Answer: C

Question type: Multiple choice question

Answer location: Paragraph J, lines 1-3 and 9-12

Answer explanation: “Crystallized intelligence about one’s occupation apparently does not decline at all until at least age 75, and if there is no disease or dementia, may remain even longer.” and “Vocabulary is one such specialized form of accrued knowledge. Research clearly shows that vocabulary improves with time. Retired professionals, especially teachers and journalists, consistently score higher on tests of vocabulary and general information than college students, who are supposed to be in their mental prime.” This suggests that the vocabulary study implied that crystallized intelligence is hard to decline with age.

18 Answer: Memory

Question type: Summary completion

Answer location: Paragraph A, lines 9-12

Answer explanation: “In humans, psychologists concluded, memory and other mental functions deteriorate over time because of inevitable organic changes in the brain as neurons die off. The mental decline after young adulthood appeared inevitable.” This suggests that the memory loses its efficiency with aging and maturation.

19 Answer: psychological

Question type: Summary completion

Answer location: Paragraph E, lines 2-5

Answer explanation: “So important is a memory that the Charles A. Dana Foundation recently spent $8.4 million to set up a consortium of leading medical centers to measure memory loss and aging through brain imaging technology, neurochemical experiments, and cognitive and psychological tests.” This suggests that the Charles A. Dana Foundation carried out the study on memory loss and aging relation through brain imaging technology, neurochemical experiments, and cognitive and psychological tests.

20 Answer: semantic memory

Question type: Summary completion

Answer location: Paragraph E, lines 7-9

Answer explanation: “Memory exists in more than one form. What we call knowledge–facts-is what psychologists such as Harry P. Bahrick, Ph.D. of Ohio Wesleyan University call semantic memory.” This suggests that the memory which is derived from the facts and knowledge is called Semantic memory.

21 Answer: episodic memory/event memory

Question type: Summary completion

Answer location: Paragraph E, lines 9-11

Answer explanation: “Events, conversations, and occurrences in time and space, on the other hand, make up episodic or event memory, which is triggered by cues from the context.” Therefore, the memory that is derived from a single event/episode is called episodic memory.

22 Answer: algebra

Question type: Summary completion

Answer location: Paragraph G, limes 1-3

Answer explanation: “Probing the longevity of knowledge, Bahrick tested 1,000 high school graduates to see how well they recalled their algebra. Some had completed the course as recently as a month before, others as long as 50 years earlier.” This suggests that the study about retention and memory was carried out on 1000 subjects on the knowledge of Algebra.

23 Answer: vocabulary

Question type: Summary completion

Answer location: Paragraph H, lines 1-3

Answer explanation: “In another study, Bahrick discovered that people who had taken several courses in Spanish, spread out over a couple of years, could recall, decades later, 60 percent or more of the vocabulary they learned.” This suggests that the study, in which the memory and retention power was tested, discovered that the people who repeatedly revised the subject retained more than half of the vocabulary learned in the Spanish language.

24 Answer: E

Question type: Matching features

Answer location: Paragraph B, lines 1-3

Answer explanation: “Equipped with imaging techniques that capture the brain in action, Stanley Rapoport, Ph.D., at the National Institutes of Health, measured the flow of blood in the brains of old and young people as they went through the task of matching photos of faces.” Hence this clearly states that the relation between the blood circulation in the brain and the tasks performed by the subjects was studied by Stanley Rapoport.

25 Answer: B

Question type: Matching features

Answer location: Paragraph A, lines 1-5

Answer explanation: “Aging, it is now clear, is part of an ongoing maturation process that all our organs go through. “In a sense, aging is keyed to the level of the vigor of the body and the continuous interaction between levels of body activity and levels of mental activity,” reports Arnold B. Scheibel, M.D., whose very academic title reflects how once far-flung domains now converge on the mind and the brain.” Hence the connecting link between physical changes and metal retrogression in relation to aging was reported by Arnold B. Scheibel.

26 Answer: A

Question type: Matching features

Answer location: Paragraph F, lines 3-5

Answer explanation: “Every memory begins as an event,” says Bahrick. “Through repetition, certain events leave behind a residue of knowledge or semantic memory.” Hence the statement regarding the episodic memory changing into semantic memory on several repetitions was made by Harry P. Bahrick

27 Answer: C

Question type: Matching features

Answer location: Paragraph D, lines 1-4

Answer explanation: “‘When a rat is kept in isolation without playmates or objects to interact with, the animal’s brain shrinks, but if we put that rat with 11 other rats in a large cage and give them an assortment of wheels, ladders, and other toys, we can show–after four days– significant differences in its brain,” says Diamond, professor of integrative biology.” This clearly states that Professor Diamond made the statement regarding the rat’s brain and the diverse environmental effects on its brain.

Tips to Solve the Question Types in Memory and Age IELTS Reading Answers

Since you have calculated your score from the Memory and Age answer keys, let us look at some quick IELTS exam preparation tips for each question type to boost your IELTS preparation.

Multiple-Choice Questions:

You will be given a reading passage followed by several questions based on the information in the paragraph in multiple-choice questions. Your task is to understand the question and compare it to the paragraph in order to select the best solution from the available possibilities.

• Before reading the passage, read the question and select the keywords. Look for the keyword possibilities using IELTS Reading keyword techniques if the question statement is short on information.
• Then, using the keywords, read the passage to find the relevant information.
• To select the correct option, carefully read the relevant words and match them with each option.
• You will find several options with keywords that do not correspond to the information.
• Try opting for the elimination method and find the best option by matching the meaning rather than just the keywords.

Summary Completion:

Summary Completion is a type of IELTS reading question that requires you to fill in a gap in a paragraph with a word or phrase from the passage. To answer summary completion questions and achieve a good IELTS band score, you can use the following strategies:

• Read the sentences carefully: This will give you an idea of the type of word or phrase that is missing.
• Scan the passage for the keywords: The keywords in the sentence can help you to identify the correct word or phrase.
• Read the sentence with the missing word or phrase: This will help you to see how the word or phrase fits into the sentence.
• Check your answer: Once you have filled in the gap, make sure that your answer makes sense in the context of the sentence.

Matching Features:

In this type of question, you will have to match a list of options with the relevant set of statements. Some tips to answer matching features questions and obtain a high IELTS Reading band score:

• Read questions and underline or circle keywords. This will help you find out where you would have to read and find later. Also, focus on how often every detail or name is appearing in the passage.
• Scan the passage and look for information given in the features and questions.
• Skim through the areas that are surrounded by keywords and features in the passage.
• Don’t get confused in case the text has synonyms of the information that is originally present in the question.
• Keep in mind that answers will not be in an order as questions.

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