WHAT ARE THE COGNITIVE CHANGES
ASSOCIATED WITH NORMAL AGING?


American Psychological Association

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Authors

Why Practitioners Need Information

Demographic Realities

Myths About Older Adults

Realities of Aging

Psychological Problems of Aging

Assessment of Older Adults

Psychological Intervention

Professional Concerns

Conclusion

Professional Resources

Bibliography

Some cognitive abilities decline with age, some may improve, and some show little change. Such changes are highly variable from one person to another, and even vary within a given person for different aspects of cognition. For example, creativity can continue into the ninth decade of life. For those functions that do decline, the change is not severe enough to cause significant impairment in daily occupational or social functioning, as occurs with a dementing disorder such as Alzheimer's disease. Some general findings include:

  • Information processing speed declines with age, which may result in a slower learning rate and greater need for repetition of new information.
  • Divided attention between two simultaneous tasks shows age-related decline, as does ability to switch attention rapidly between multiple auditory inputs, although ability to switch attention between visual inputs does not change much with age. Overall levels of performance in sustained attention or vigilance tasks appear to reduce with age. Filtering out irrelevant information through selective attention also appears to decline with age.
  • Short-term, or primary, memory shows relatively less age-related decline.
  • Long-term, or secondary, memory shows more substantial age changes, although the decline is greater for recall than for recognition, and performance generally benefits from cueing.
  • Most aspects of language ability are well-preserved, such as the use of language sounds, meaningful combination of words, and verbal comprehension; and some aspects may continue to improve with age, such as vocabulary. However, word-finding, or naming, ability and rapid word list generation show
    declines with age.
  • A variety of tasks shows age-related visuospatial decline, including three-dimensional construction and drawing.
  • Abstraction and mental flexibility also show some decline with age.
  • An accumulation of practical expertise, or wisdom, may continue toward the very end of life.