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Cognitive Processes in Adulthood

Cognitive Processes in Adulthood. Perspectives. Organismic: Piaget formal operations: abstractions Post-formal operations Problem finding Dialectical reasoning Mechanistic: Social learning Contextual: Vygotsky – interactions Psychometric: intelligence. Intelligence. What is it?

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Cognitive Processes in Adulthood

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  1. Cognitive Processes in Adulthood

  2. Perspectives • Organismic: Piaget • formal operations: abstractions • Post-formal operations • Problem finding • Dialectical reasoning • Mechanistic: Social learning • Contextual: Vygotsky – interactions • Psychometric: intelligence

  3. Intelligence • What is it? • inherited and acquired • no general definition • Intelligent Behaviour • goal-oriented (conscious, deliberate) • adaptive (problem solving)

  4. Multidimensional • Diverse • Cattell’s “g” • Whatever intelligence tests measure: “IQ” • Thurstone: seven primary mental abilities • Sternberg: cognitive approach • analytic (academic) • practical (problem solving) • creative

  5. Cattell & Horn: two “competencies” • Fluid Intelligence: flexible reasoning • Basic mental abilities • E.g., abstract thinking, speed of thinking, problem solving • Crystallized intelligence: facts • Information acquired from education and experience

  6. Gardner: multiple intelligences • Logical/math • Linguistic • Visual/spatial • Musical • Body/kinesthetic • Interpersonal • Intrapersonal

  7. Intelligence and Aging • Stereotype: • intellectual activity peaks at 18-19 years • declines steadily with age

  8. Developmental Research Shows: • most intellectual abilities stable throughout early and middle adulthood • cohort differences = powerful influence on intelligence differences • many factors affect intellectual functioning: education, health, mental well-being

  9. Growth, Stability, or Decline? • Decrementalist vs. • Continued Potential views

  10. Psychometric Perspective • Focus on: • measuring the mind • individual differences • description, not explanation

  11. Intelligence Testing • Francis Galton • Cattell, Binet • Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales

  12. Verbal (language, knowledge) • Performance (manipulate info. to solve problems) • Greater decline in performance than verbal tests over age

  13. Fluid vs. Crystallized • Decline in fluid, stable/increase in crystallized

  14. Seattle Longitudinal Study (Warner Schaie, 1994) • 5,000 participants (representative) • Studied six times, at 7-year intervals • Several cohorts (21-71 years) • Began in 1956, latest testing in 1992

  15. Charted course of 6 primary mental abilities (PMAT) • inductive reasoning • numeric ability • verbal ability • spatial orientation • verbal memory • perceptual speed

  16. Cross-Sectional Results • Much individual variability • Maintenance/increase to @ age 50 • Decline in performance beyond 50 yrs. • Verbal memory best maintained • Perceptual speed most reduced

  17. Longitudinal Results • cohort differences • no change/increase in performance across age

  18. Performance of total sample at each measurement interval • peak at midlife • increasing decline with age • Cohort Effects (over 28 years) • Break data down by birth date • Positive Cohort Trends • Later-born perform better than earlier-born (in general)

  19. General Conclusions about Age-Effects • Large individual differences in degree, rate, and pattern of change with age • Different aspects of intelligence follow different patterns of change with time (e.g., crystallized vs. fluid intelligence)

  20. Cohort trends show influence of socio-historical context on cognitive development • In healthy adults, cognitive decline is small, at least until very late adulthood • Trends support combination of decrement and continued-potential

  21. Factors Influencing Intellectual Performance in Later Life • Health • normal vs. superior health (Botwinick & Birren, 1963) • superior > normal on WAIS • slight deviations from optimal health affect intelligence

  22. Hypertension (Wilkie et al., 1971) • WAIS administered twice over 10 years (Time 1: 60-69 years) • Largest decline for those with high blood pressure at first testing

  23. Sensory changes: e.g., hearing Loss • correlates negatively with intelligence (e.g., Baltes et al., 1997) • greater loss – poorer performance (esp. on information, vocabulary tests) • Why?

  24. Organic Brain Syndrome (institutionalized with dementia) • decline greater than in healthy

  25. Education • (Birren & Morrison, 1961) • Number of years correlated with intellectual performance in later life • “General Intelligence” related to years of education (50% of variance), and not strongly related to age (10% of variance)

  26. Initial Level of Ability • No differential effects on rate of intellectual decline with age • Relative levels maintained across lifespan

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