11-4 Aging and Intelligence

1. By Mark Piazza Sibley Bardales Stephanie Townley 11-4Aging and Intelligence

2. Phase 1: Cross-Sectional Evidence for Intellectual Decline

3. Phase 2:Longitudinal Evidence for Intellectual Stability • Longitudinal study: research in which the same people are restudied or retested over a long period • Several psychologists studied intelligence longitudinally to entering college students in 1920 • They found that their intelligence remained stable until late in life • The problem with cross sectional studies was that it compared 70 year olds and 30 year olds who are from a different era, different sized families, and better or less affluent families

4. Phase 3: It All Depends • Intellectual performance an increase or decrease depending on how we assess it. • Research has found that intelligence isn’t a single trait but distinct skills and abilities. • Intellectual performance increases or decreases with age depending on what you measure. • Crystallized intelligence is one’s accumulated knowledge as reflected in vocabulary and analogies tests - it increases with age. • Fluid intelligence is ones ability to reason speedily and abstractly, as when solving logic problems – decreases with age. • Fun fact - having social contacts has shown to decrease the onset of Alzheimers.