The serial testing of intelligence in a panel of 405 persons over the age of sixty was commenced in 1966. Analysis of 155 completed progressive scores (WAIS (l), NHAIS (l), WAIS (2), NHAIS (2) obtained over ten years) was reported in 1976. A surviving group of 118 (average age 80) has been re‐tested (WAIS (3)) in 1981. Twenty were then aged between 85 and 95. The 1981 scores have been analyzed by their age‐groups at commencement of the study (60–64, 65–69, 70–74, 75–79). The longitudinal changes have been tested statistically, and show that for all age‐groups (as reported of the larger number in 1976) the average yearly change in the first four tests was negligible until the ninth and tenth decades, when it reached approximately two percent per annum; but that in all groups (regardless of age at commencement) the decline was more marked in the past five years. As before, there was wide variation within age‐groups — some in their eighties actually improving over sixteen years. More detailed analysis of differences between verbal and perceptual abilities will be discussed; and it will be shown that, in the UQOR test, score differences between 1977 and 1981 proved to be unrelated to age.
The advanced ages and good health of many of the surviving members of the longitudinal study known as “Operation Retirement” prompted the researchers to initiate a study of longevity. One hundred and eleven subjects were interviewed intensively (average age 80) and life‐data and information of psychological concern were collated concerning panel members and their siblings and ancestors. Age at death and causes of death were generally reliably reported from family records, variously reaching back through two or three generations. Methodological problems caused the investigators to seek a new parameter, which they have called the Longevity Quotient (LQ), in some ways analogous to the Age‐Resistance Quotient established in relation to the UQOR retirement recreation guidance tests. For this purpose, a tabulation of life‐expectancy at birth had to be compiled, beyond the earliest birth dates available in the official Australian records. This will be discussed, in the explanation of the formula:
Longevity Quotient (LQ) = Age of death/Life Expectancy at birth × 100
Since the LQ cannot properly be estimated until death, the method has had to be applied tentatively in respect of panel members, but firmly in a comparison of IQs and LQs of deceased members of the panel.
Lucy Enticknap, a nursery nurse by training, is the head of Nursery School Riverside Teddies in Croydon, Surrey. Here she explains why she enjoys her job so much.
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