Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-5f56664f6-p8hl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-07T06:10:25.612Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Age Differences and Individual Differences in Cognitive Functions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2010

By
Klaus Oberauer
Edited by
Randall W. Engle ,
Grzegorz Sedek ,
Ulrich von Hecker  and
Daniel N. McIntosh
Klaus Oberauer
Affiliation:
University of Potsdam, Allgemeine Psychologie I, Postfach 60 15 53, 14415 Potsdam, Germany
Randall W. Engle
Affiliation:
Georgia Institute of Technology
Grzegorz Sedek
Affiliation:
Warsaw School of Social Psychology and Polish Academy of Sciences
Ulrich von Hecker
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
Daniel N. McIntosh
Affiliation:
University of Denver
Get access

Summary

Here is a pair of very simplistic hypotheses: (1) Differences among groups or individuals in cognitive performance can all be reduced to a single source, for instance, general intelligence. (2) This source is the same for all comparisons among groups of individuals that differ in broad cognitive functioning (e.g., children vs. adults, younger vs. older adults, healthy vs. cognitively impaired populations) such that the pattern of differences across various indicators of cognitive performance will be the same for every such group contrast.

In their plain form, these statements are certainly wrong. In a moderated version, however, they both have considerable merit. Cross-sectional comparisons of young adults (around 20 years of age) and older adults (age 60 and above), for instance, show that older age is associated with reduced cognitive performance across a wide variety of tasks, and a large portion of the age variance can be accounted for by a single factor in structural equation models (Salthouse, 1996; Lindenberger, Mayr, & Kliegl, 1993). Likewise, individual differences in cognitive abilities can to a large degree be captured by the g factor of intelligence (Jensen, 1998), which in turn is strongly associated with working memory capacity (Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999; Kyllonen, 1996; Süß, Oberauer, Wittmann, Wilhelm, & Schulze, 2002). Research on the aging of cognition has also shown that the pattern of age differences across a broad set of speeded tasks can often be described by a simple linear function: older adults' latencies equal younger adults' latencies on the same tasks or conditions, multiplied by a constant slowing factor (Cerella, 1985) or incremented by a constant (Verhaeghen & Cerella, 2002).

Type
Chapter
Information
Cognitive Limitations in Aging and Psychopathology , pp. 44 - 72
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allport, A., Styles, E. A., & Hsieh, S. (1994). Shifting intentional set: Exploring the dynamic control of tasks. In Umiltá, C. & Moscovitch, M. (Eds.), Attention & Performance (Vol. XV, pp. 421–452). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. R. (1974). Retrieval of propositional information from long-term memory. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 457–474.Google Scholar
Belleville, S., Rouleau, N., & Caza, N. (1998). Effect of normal aging on the manipulation of information in working memory. Memory & Cognition, 26, 572–583.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brinley, J. F. (1965). Cognitive sets, speed and accuracy of performance in the elderly. In Welford, A. T. & Birren, J. E. (Eds.), Behavior, aging, and the nervous system (pp. 114–149). Springfield, IL: Mason.Google Scholar
Cantor, J., & Engle, R. W. (1993). Working-memory capacity as long-term memory activation: An individual-differences approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 1101–1114.Google ScholarPubMed
Cerella, J. (1985). Information processing rates in the elderly. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 260–273.Google Scholar
Cowan, N. (1995). Attention and memory: An integrated framework. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cowan, N. (1999). An embedded-process model of working memory. In A. Miyake & P. Shah (Eds.), Models of working memory. Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control (pp. 62–101). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beni, R., & Palladino, P. (2000). Intrusion errors in working memory tasks. Are they related to reading comprehension ability?Learning and Individual Differences, 12, 131–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beni, R., Palladino, P., Pazzaglia, P., & Cornoldi, C. (1998). Increases in intrusion errors and working memory deficit of poor comprehenders. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51A, 305–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, J., Johnson, R., Swales, M., & Freer, C. (1997). Frontal lobe deficits after head injury: Unity and diversity of function. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 14, 713–741.Google Scholar
Engle, R. W. (1996). Working memory and retrieval: An inhibition-resource approach. In Richardson, J. T. E., Engle, R. W., Hasher, L., Logie, R. H., Stoltzfus, E. R., & Zacks, R. T. (Eds.), Working memory and human cognition (pp. 89–119). New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engle, R. W., Kane, M. J., & Tuholski, S. W. (1999). Individual differences in working memory capacity and what they tell us about controlled attention, general fluid intelligence, and functions of the prefrontal cortex. In Miyake, A. & Shah, P. (Eds.), Models of working memory. Mechanisms of active maintenance and executive control (pp. 102–134). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E., & Conway, A. R. A. (1999). Working memory, short term memory and general fluid intelligence: A latent variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 309–331.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garavan, H. (1998). Serial attention within working memory. Memory & Cognition, 26, 263–276.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerard, L., Zacks, R. T., Hasher, L., & Radvansky, G. A. (1991). Age deficits in retrieval: The fan effect. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 43, 27–33.Google Scholar
Hale, S., & Jansen, J. (1994). Global processing-time coefficients characterize individual and group differences in cognitive speed. Psychological Science, 5, 384–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, M., & Hasher, L. (1991). Aging and suppression: Memory for previously relevant information. Psychology & Aging, 6, 587–594.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hasher, L., Quig, M. B., & May, C. P. (1997). Inhibitory control over no-longer-relevant information: Adult age differences. Memory & Cognition, 25, 286–295.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1988). Working memory, comprehension, and aging: A review and a new view. In Bower, G. H. (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 22, pp. 193–225). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hasher, L., Zacks, R. T., & May, C. P. (1999). Inhibitory control, circadian arousal, and age. In Gopher, D. & Koriat, A. (Eds.), Attention and Performance (pp. 653–675). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hedden, T., & Park, D. (2001). Aging and interference in verbal working memory. Psychology & Aging, 16, 666–681.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hedden, T., & Park, D. C. (2003). Contributions of source and inhibitory mechanisms to age-related retroactive interference in verbal working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 93–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor. Westport: Praeger.Google Scholar
Jersild, A. T. (1927). Mental set and shift. Archives of Psychology, 89.Google Scholar
Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2002). The role of prefrontal cortex in working-memory capacity, executive attention, and general fluid intelligence: An individual-differences perspective. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9, 637–671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kliegl, R., & Lindenberger, U. (1993). Modeling intrusions and correct recall in episodic memory: Adult age differences in encoding of list context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 19, 617–637.Google ScholarPubMed
Kliegl, R., Mayr, U., & Krampe, R. T. (1994). Time-accuracy functions for determining process and person differences: An application to cognitive aging. Cognitive Psychology, 26, 134–164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kramer, A. F., Humphrey, D. G., Larish, J. F., Logan, G. D., & Strayer, D. L. (1994). Aging and inhibition: Beyond a unitary view of inhibitory processing in attention. Psychology & Aging, 9, 491–512.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kray, J., Li, K. Z. H., & Lindenberger, U. (2002). Age differences in executive functioning: The search for sources of age-differential decline in task-switching components. Brain & Cognition, 49, 363–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kray, J., & Lindenberger, U. (2000). Adult age differences in task switching. Psychology and Aging, 15, 126–147.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kyllonen, P. C. (1996). Is working memory capacity Spearman's g? In Dennis, I. & Tapsfield, P. (Eds.), Human abilities: Their nature and measurement (pp. 49–75). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Lindenberger, U., Mayr, U., & Kliegl, R. (1993). Speed and intelligence in old age. Psychology and Aging, 8, 207–220.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Logan, G. D., & Gordon, R. D. (2001). Executive control of visual attention in dual-task situations. Psychological Review, 108, 393–434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, U. (2001). Age differences in the selection of mental sets: The role of inhibition, stimulus ambiguity, and response-set overlap. Psychology & Aging, 16, 96–109.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mayr, U., & Kliegl, R. (1993). Sequential and coordinative complexity: Age-based processing limitations in figural transformations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 19, 1297–1320.Google ScholarPubMed
Mayr, U., Kliegl, R., & Krampe, R. T. (1996). Sequential and coordinative processing dynamics in figural transformation across the life span. Cognition, 59, 61–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mayr, U., & Liebscher, T. (2001). Is there an age deficit in the selection of mental sets? In Mayr, U., Spieler, D. H. & Kliegl, R. (Eds.), Ageing and executive control (pp. 47–70). Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Mayr, U., Spieler, D. H., & Kliegl, R. (Eds.). (2001). Ageing and executive control. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
McElree, B., & Dosher, B. A. (1989). Serial position and set size in short-term memory: The time course of recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118, 346–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meiran, N., Chorev, Z., & Sapir, A. (2000). Component processes in task-switching. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 211–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Monsell, S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 134–140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oberauer, K. (2001). Removing irrelevant information from working memory. A cognitive aging study with the modified Sternberg task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 948–957.Google ScholarPubMed
Oberauer, K. (2002). Access to information in working memory: Exploring the focus of attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 411–421.Google ScholarPubMed
Oberauer, K. (2003). Selective attention to elements in working memory. Experimental Psychology, 50, 257–269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oberauer, K., Demmrich, A., Mayr, U., & Kliegl, R. (2001). Dissociating retention and access in working memory: An age-comparative study of mental arithmetic. Memory & Cognition, 29, 18–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oberauer, K., & Kliegl, R. (2001). Beyond resources: Formal models of complexity effects and age differences in working memory. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 13, 187–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberauer, K., Süß, H. M., Schulze, R., Wilhelm, O., & Wittmann, W. W. (2000). Working memory capacity – Facets of a cognitive ability construct. Personality and Individual Differences, 29, 1017–1045.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberauer, K., Süß, H.-M., Wilhelm, O., & Sander, N. (in press). Individual differences in working memory capacity and reasoning ability. In Towse, J. N. (Ed.), Variation in working memory. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Oberauer, K., Süß, H. M., Wilhelm, O., & Wittmann, W. W. (2003). The multiple faces of working memory – storage, processing, supervision, and coordination. Intelligence, 31, 167–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberauer, K., Wendland, M., & Kliegl, R. (2003). Age differences in working memory: The roles of storage and selective access. Memory & Cognition, 31, 563–569.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Piccinin, A. M., & Rabbitt, P. M. A. (1999). Contribution of cognitive abilities to performance and improvement on a substitution coding tast. Psychology & Aging, 14, 539–551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, R. J. Jr., Hager, L. D., & Heron, C. (1994). Prefrontal cognitive processes: Working memory and inhibition in the antisaccade task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 374–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, R. D., & Monsell, S. (1995). Costs of a predictable switch between simple cognitive tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 207–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, V. M., & Engle, R. W. (1998). Working memory capacity and suppression. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 418–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salthouse, T. A. (1996). The processing speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. Psychological Review, 103, 403–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shilling, V. M., Chetwynd, A., & Rabbitt, P. M. A. (2002). Individual inconsistency across measures of inhibition: an investigation of the construct validity of inhibition in older adults. Neuropsychologia, 40, 605–619.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sliwinski, M. J., & Hall, C. B. (1998). Constraints on general slowing: A meta-analysis using hierarchical linear models with random coefficients. Psychology and Aging, 13, 164–175.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, E. E., & Jonides, J. (1999). Storage and executive processes in the frontal lobes. Science, 283, 1657–1661.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sternberg, S. (1969). Memory scanning: Mental processes revealed by reaction-time experiments. American Scientist, 57, 421–457.Google ScholarPubMed
Süß, H. M., Oberauer, K., Wittmann, W. W., Wilhelm, O., & Schulze, R. (2002). Working memory capacity explains reasoning ability – and a little bit more. Intelligence, 30, 261–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verhaeghen, P., & Cerella, J. (2002). Aging, executive control, and attention: a review of meta-analyses. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 26, 849–857.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Verhaeghen, P., & Meersman, L. (1998). Aging and the Stroop effect: A meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging, 13, 120–126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Verhaeghen, P., Kliegl, R., & Mayr, U. (1997). Sequential and coordinative complexity in time-accuracy functions for mental arithmetic. Psychology and Aging, 12, 555–564.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ward, G., Roberts, M. J., & Phillips, L. H. (2001). Task-switching costs, Stroop-costs, and executive control: A correlational study. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A, 491–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, R. L. (1996). An application of prefrontal cortex function theory to cognitive aging. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 272–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yonelinas, A. P. (2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 441–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zacks, R. T., Radvansky, G., & Hasher, L. (1996). Studies of directed forgetting in older adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 143–156.Google ScholarPubMed
Zheng, Y., Myerson, J., & Hale, S. (2000). Age and individual differences in visuospatial processing speed: Testing the magnification hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7, 113–120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×