Transcript 11-4: Aging and Intelligence

11.4
Suve , Tanner, Kaylee
Phase I: Cross-Sectional Evidence for
Intellectual Decline
In Cross-Sectional studies, researchers consistently
find that older adults give fewer correct answers than
do younger adults when given an intelligence test.
David Wechsler concluded that “ the decline of
mental ability is part of the general aging process of
the organism as a whole.”
Phase II: Longitudinal Evidence for
Intellectual Stability
 Longitudinal
intelligence tests:
◦Retested same people over a period of years
◦Intelligence remained stable or even increased
over time
◦Different from cross-sectional studies, which
compared people of not only different ages but also
different cultures
Phase III: It All Depends
All intelligence tests have flaws, such as testing
different forms of intelligence, so it is difficult to
compare results
 Older people tend to do worse at tests that assess
speed of thinking, but better at tests on general
vocabulary and knowledge
 Crystallized intelligence is one’s accumulated
knowledge and verbal skills that tends to increase with
age.
 Fluid Intelligence is one’s ability to reason speedily and
abstractly and it tends to decrease during late
adulthood.
 With age, we lose recall memory and processing speed
but gain vocabulary and knowledge.
