Cognitive and social functioning across adulthood: Age or student status differences?

Parks, Carlton W.; Mitchell, David B.; Perlmutter, Marion

doi:10.1037/0882-7974.1.3.248

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Moreover, note that student status had very little effect on the presumably more school-relevant measures of paired-associate learning and verbal and spatial memory. These latter results, together with those of Parks, Mitchell, and Perlmutter (1986), in which groups of older students and older nonstudents were found to perform equivalently and at substantially lower levels than young students, seem to suggest that student status per se is probably not a major factor in age-related differences in most types of cognition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Investigation of student status, background variables, and feasibility of standard tasks in cognitive aging research.

Salthouse¹,

Kausler²,

Saults³

1988

Psychology and Aging

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Data are reported on a variety of cognitive tasks from 62 college students and 362 nonstudent adults between 20 and 79 years of age. The goals of the project were as follows: (a) to investigate the validity of the practices of using college students and adults over age 65 in studies of cognitive aging, (b) to examine the influence of a variety of background variables on age trends in cognitive performance, and (c) to initiate the development of standard tasks to assist in the description of subject samples in cognitive aging research. The age trends in cognitive performance were relatively independent of an assortment of background variables, but because college students were atypical of their age group in several performance measures they may be suspect as the young-adult control subjects in investigations involving these types of measures. Adults over the age of about 65 appear to exhibit accelerated slowing of speeded performance, but in other respects perform about as one would expect on the basis of the age trends observed between the ages of 20 and 65.The present studies were designed to investigate three issues considered important in research on cognitive aging. Two of the issues were related to the assessment of presumably normative cross-sectional age trends in cognitive functioning (student status of young subjects and the role of background variables on the relation between age and performance), and the third (standard tasks) was concerned with improving the description of subject samples in cognitive aging research.One focus of the current studies was to examine the validity of the practices of using certain subject populations in research on cognitive aging. Specifically, college students were investigated because of the possibility that participation in school-related activities might provide them with an advantage in some cognitive tasks, and adults over age 65 were investigated because of the possibility that factors of retirement-associated activity disengagement and increased susceptibility to many diseases may lead to exaggerations of age-related effects on cognition. The means of investigation involved determining whether the performance of college students or adults over age 65 is predictable from the regression equations relating age to performance among nonstudent adults ranging in age from 20 to 65 years. If not, and the performance of college students or adults older than 65 is discontinuous from the functions of nonstudents of varying ages, then it might be inferred (a) that college students are not appropriate young-adult control subjects in studies designed to assess the effects of age on that type of cognitive functioning, or (b) that age-related effects beyond about age 65 involve somewhat different processes than those occurring at younger ages.A second focus of the current studies was to determine the contribution of variables related to the individual's status or This research was supported by a grant from the University of Missouri Weldon Spring Research Fund.Correspondence con...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Investigation of student status, background variables, and feasibility of standard tasks in cognitive aging research.

Salthouse¹,

Kausler²,

Saults³

1988

Psychology and Aging

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“…Although many of these variables (e.g., education) cannot be said to be independent of cognitive ability, they are not perceived as components of memory performance. Researchers examining the relationship between lifestyle variables and age differences in memory have found that student status (Parks, Mitchell, & Perlmutter, 1986; Ratner, Schell, Crimmins, Mittelman, & Baldinelli, 1987; Zivian & Darjes, 1983), general activity (Langer, Rodin, Beck, Weinman, & Spitzer, 1979; Winocur, Moscovitch, & Freedman, 1987), physical activity (Dustman et al, 1984; Powell, 1974), and intellectual activity (Rice & Meyer, 1985) are related to age differences in memory performance. For the most part, personality does not appear to demonstrate a relationship with age differences in memory (Cavanaugh & Murphy, 1986; Kahn, Zarit, Hilbert, & Niederehe, 1975), with the possible exception of anxiety (West, Boatwright, & Schleser, 1984; Yesavage, Rose, & Spiegel, 1982).…”

Section: Bivariate Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

The origins of individual differences in memory among the elderly: A behavior genetic analysis.

Finkel¹,

McGue²

1993

Psychology and Aging

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The purpose of this investigation was to apply behavior genetic methods to investigate individual differences in memory performance. Memory and various cognitive and lifestyle variables were obtained from 93 monozygotic twin pairs and 67 dizygotic twin pairs aged 60-88 years as part of the Minnesota Twin Study of Adult Development and Aging. Univariate analysis, used to determine the relative influence of genetic and environmental factors on 4 measures of memory (word recall, immediate and delayed text recall, and figure memory), suggested that 55% of the variance in memory performance could be attributed to genetic factors. Bivariate analysis was used to determine the specific variables that mediate the genetic and environmental influences on memory. Results suggested that the relationship between memory and cognitive variables was genetic in nature, whereas the nature of the relationship between memory and lifestyle variables was environmental.

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“…groceries on a shelf (Read 1987), hands in bridge (Charness 1979), board positions in chess (Charness 1981), instructions on bottles of prescription medicine (Morrell et al 1990), people's names (Cohen & Faulkner 1986;James 1997) and golf shots (Backman & Molander 1986). Age-related declines in episodic memory performance are inversely related to years of education, but nevertheless they usually remain when education is controlled statistically (Nyberg et al 1996) or when young and older adults with comparable education or current status as students are tested (Parks et al 1986). …”

Section: (A) Episodic Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory, language, and ageing

Burke

MacKay

1997

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B

202

134

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This overview provides both theoretical and empirical reasons for emphasizing practice and familiar skills as a practical strategy for enhancing cognitive functioning in old age. Our review of empirical research on age-related changes in memory and language reveals a consistent pattern of spared and impaired abilities in normal old age. Relatively preserved in old age is memory performance involving highly practised skills and familiar information, including factual, semantic and autobiographical information. Relatively impaired in old age is memory performance that requires the formation of new connections, for example, recall of recent autobiographical experiences, new facts or the source of newly acquired facts. This pattern of impaired new learning versus preserved old learning cuts across distinctions between semantic memory, episodic memory, explicit memory and perhaps also implicit memory. However, familiar verbal information is not completely preserved when accessed on the output side rather than the input side: aspects of language production, namely word ¢nding and spelling, exhibit signi¢cant age-related declines. This emerging pattern of preserved and impaired abilities presents a fundamental challenge for theories of cognitive ageing, which must explain why some aspects of language and memory are more vulnerable to the e¡ects of ageing than others. Information-universal theories, involving mechanisms such as general slowing that are independent of the type or structure of the information being processed, require additional mechanisms to account for this pattern of cognitive aging. Information-speci¢c theories, where the type or structure of the postulated memory units can in£uence the e¡ects of cognitive ageing, are able to account for this emerging pattern, but in some cases require further development to account for comprehensive cognitive changes such as general slowing. I N T RODUC T IONThe dramatic increase during the 20th century in the number of people reaching old age has heightened interest in normal cognitive ageing as a research topic. Although many prominent people remained highly creative or intellectually productive in old age, for example, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marianne Moore, George Bernard Shaw, Claude Monet, Michaelangelo (Lehman 1953;Dennis 1968), these conspicuous cases may represent exceptional or optimal instances of cognitive ageing that do not apply to the average individual. Understanding what cognitive changes normally occur in old age has become critical for determining how normal, exceptional and pathological cognitive ageing di¡er, and for delineating the intellectual potential of older adults in our society, and the conditions that enhance it.Responding to this challenge, research on cognition and ageing has developed rapidly over the past several decades, going beyond its early focus on psychometric intelligence test data to encompass new experimental paradigms and theoretical frameworks from cognitive psychology and the neurosciences. In the past, a rich harvest of empir...

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Cognitive and social functioning across adulthood: Age or student status differences?

Cited by 11 publications

References 16 publications

Investigation of student status, background variables, and feasibility of standard tasks in cognitive aging research.

Investigation of student status, background variables, and feasibility of standard tasks in cognitive aging research.

The origins of individual differences in memory among the elderly: A behavior genetic analysis.

Memory, language, and ageing

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