|
|
|
|
||
|
||
|
|
||
| SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE | ||
|
 |
People
keep their distinctive patterns of cognitive ability as they age
Eurekalert,
September 07, 2003
Longitudinal
study allowed researchers to disconfirm the controversial hypothesis of
"dedifferentiation;" cognitive skill levels do not appear to
merge late in life Washington
-- Never good with numbers? The bad news: As you age, you may still not be
good with them. The good news: You'll still be good at what you're good at
today. New research reveals that, contrary to prior thinking, even the
very old retain their distinctive patterns of cognitive strengths and
weakness. The findings are published in the September issue of the Journal
of Experimental Psychology: General, which is published by the American
Psychological Association. The
results of a large-scale, longitudinal study did not confirm popular but
unproven theories of "dedifferentiation" -– that for any given
person, varied cognitive skill levels start to merge late in life, perhaps
due to brain changes. Anstey and her co-authors explain that the
dedifferentiation hypothesis –- that individuals
"differentiate" cognitively as they mature into adulthood, and
then "de-differentiate" as they enter old age -- has a
"long history in the fields of intelligence and individual
differences, but has rarely been tested on a large, population-based
sample of very old adults." In
dedifferentiation, aging would make discrete cognitive abilities correlate
more tightly with less of a spread between, say, verbal ability and
memory, or processing speed and memory. It's what would happen if
students' verbal and math scores were consistently closer on the GRE than
on the earlier SAT. However, researchers were unable to confirm or
disconfirm the theory, especially through longitudinal study – until
now. An
Australian-American research team analyzed scores on various cognitive
tests administered as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing
[sic]. The data came from 1,823 people grouped into cohorts of ages 70-74,
75-79 and 80-84 years old. A search of dozens of test correlations did not
yield any signs of age-related dedifferentiation. For example,
participants who, at age 72, were lower on verbal skills but higher on
processing speed retained that difference at age 83. The analysis held up
whether researchers studied people over time (longitudinal) or at a single
point in time (cross-sectional), further supporting their claims. Lead
researcher Kaarin Anstey, Ph.D., and her co-authors say, "These
results do not support the view that shared biological factors become
increasingly important for explaining within-individual change in
cognitive and sensory function late in life. It appears that in normal
cognitive aging, people will maintain their relative strengths and
weaknesses that they had earlier in life." ### Article:
"Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Patterns of Dedifferentiation in
Late-Life Cognitive and Sensory Function: The Effects of Age, Ability,
Attrition, and Occasion of Measurement," Kaarin J. Anstey, Ph.D.,
Australian National University; Scott M. Hofer, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State
University University Park Campus; and Mary A. Luszcz, Ph.D., Flinders
University. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 132, No. 3. (Full
text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-1323470.pdf).
Kaarin
Anstey can be reached at the Centre for Mental Health Researcher,
Australian National University, by email at kaarin.anstey@anu.edu.au
or by phone at 61-2-6125-8140. The
American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the
largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology
in the United States and is the world's largest association of
psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 150,000 researchers,
educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in
53 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and
Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a
science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
|
