By high school, people normally develop a strategy framework for
problem-solving: 1) check memory to see if answer is stored as fact; 2)
test confidence; 3) if answer not found or not satisfactory, go to backup
strategy; keep repeating steps 2 and 3 until answer is found. After age
60, vast individual differences are observed over next 20 years; some
people go downhill dramatically. By age 80 everybody shows some loss.
Persons with active mental life fare better.
PERCEPTUAL SPEED
By age 50 perception slows noticeably, often because sensory
faculties are deteriorating physically or brain connections slow down.
Slowing of response after 50 may not be pronounced. Older people score
lower only on timed tests, may perform better at tasks that are not
timed, Great individual variability in deterioration of sensory
perceptual faculties accounts for vast differences in performance.
LEARNING NEW TASKS
Rats that have lived in enriched environment run mazes better than
those that have not. People who abandon mental activity when older
experience slowing and deterioration of many functions--many reversible
when person resumes mental activity.
CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE
This encompasses specialized accumulated knowledge. It does not
appear to decline at all until after 75, and may remain intact even
longer if there is no disease or dementia.
ATTENTION
Neurons in parietal lobe orient attention and shift it from one
location to another. Network develops between 3-6 months after birth.
Attention is controlled by stimulus.
Norepinephrine (arising in locus ceruleus) plays role in alerting
posterior areas and activates visual cortex.
Noticing, localized in more anterior parts, develops toward end of
first year.
Maintaining alertness takes place in frontal lobes, is responsible
for sustained vigilance and detecting meaning in language and other
modalities.
Inhibitory controls develop over auditory and visual processing, to
suppress irrelevant input.
By college age, attention is fully developed. Over 70, attention
declines, possibly because suppression mechanism deteriorates; person is
easily distracted, garrulous.
METAMEMORY
Judgment of own ability to monitor and control own mental
processes. Improves with age. After 40, adults may need to make conscious
effort to learn, remember, and manage new information as store of
memories increases. In elderly, metamemory remains most effective in
individuals with active intellects and stimulating lives.
COGNITIVE STYLE
Refers to general ability to adapt and roll with life's punches.
Rigid people show declines in mental functioning earlier in life than
flexible people. Flexibility in midlife is good indicator of reduced risk
of mental decline.
WORKING MEMORY (Random Access)
This is memory to which you refer. It increases through childhood,
peaks in 20s. Connections between neurons proliferate with learning,
strengthen with use. By acquiring expertise, it becomes easier to acquire
knowledge and recall it because there are more neural connections through
which to access it. At any age, people easily forget what to buy without
a list.
MOOD
Higher incidence of depression in older people. At any age,
depressed mood diminishes mental functioning.
INFORMATION PROCESSING
Clearly slows down with age. May take longer to process information
in order to retain it.
PERSONALITY
Personality is crystallized early--cranky old people were usually
obnoxious when young--and shows great stability throughout life. Traits
that set individuals apart are set by age 30, but people remain able to
change if motivated to do so. Some repressed people who had early
misfortune may uncover hidden talents. The very old who remain healthy
can integrate experiences and enrich personality. Existing traits may be
emphasized with age; people become more introspective and sexual
stereotypes diminish. Older people may become impatient with trouble
doing what once came easily. Only Alzheimer's or other global disease can
make personality unrecognizable.
MEMORY: NAMES AND FACES
Fairly rapid onset of deterioration in middle age. Often perceived
as worse than truly is. Older people blame forgetting on age, but people
generally are not good at any age unless they process the information by
associating name/occupation or name/facial features. Very long-term
memory of classmates names and faces fades after 3-5 years in absence of
further contact. Poor memory at any age may be due to depression or a
wish not to remember.
EPISODIC MEMORY
This major memory system, associated with the frontal lobe,
registers and stores experience of events in time and space and allows
you to retrieve the information; it underlies mental time travel.
Requires time and space cues at any age. Memory of new events is retained
when there is a rich bed of information to which it can be
anchored.
RETRIEVAL OF INFORMATION
Takes longer and involves more errors after 50. As individual ages,
more items accumulate in storage, and there are more competing choices as
you try to match the specifications of what you want with the
characteristics of each item in storage. This is sign your memory is rich
and well-stocked.
ILLUSTRATION: (SCOTT MACNEILL)
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