Kathleen Stassen Berger
Part VIII
Chapter Twenty-Four
Late Adulthood: Cognitive Development
The Usual: Information Processing
After Age 65
The impaired Dementia
The Optimal: New Cognitive
Development
Prepared by Madeleine Lacefield
Tattoon, M.A.
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Late Adulthood: Cognitive Development
“By the end of adulthood, physical
impairment, reduced perception,
decreased energy, and slower reactions
take an increasing toll.”
Late-adulthood cognition is too complex to
be captured in a brief social conversation.
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• information-processing approach
– breaking down cognition into the steps of
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input (sensing)
storage (memory)
program (control process)
output
“a perspective that compares human thinking
processes, by analogy, to computer analysis of data,
including sensory input, connections, stored
memories, and output” (Chapter 6)
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Sensing and Perceiving
– stimuli becomes information, perceived
by the mind, which must cross the
sensory threshold
• the person must be able to sense them,
decline begins with age
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Attention Deficits
– sensory-input problems—people miss
information without realizing it
– cognition depends on perception, and
perception depends on sensation
– one way to predict an older person’s
intellect may be to measure vision,
hearing, or smell
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Interference
– is thought to be a major impediment to
effective and efficient cognition in the
elderly
– reduced sensory input affects cognition
by increasing the effects of interference
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Memory
– storage refers to memory in the
information-processing model of
cognition
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
– Working memory
• is the capacity to keep information in mind for a
few seconds while processing it, evaluating,
calculating, inferring, and so on—working
memory functions as both a repository and a
processor
• dual-task deficit
– a situation in which a person’s performance of one
task is impeded by interference from the simultaneous
performance of another task
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Long-Term Memory
– the knowledge base stored in memory
• the component of the information
processing system in which virtually
limitless amounts of information can be
stored indefinitely
• knowledge base
– a body of knowledge in a particular area that
makes it easier to master new information in
that area
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Selective Memory
– in areas not related to expertise,
selective deficits in long-term memory
appear
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Control Processes
– that part of the information-processing
system that regulates the analysis and
flow of information—memory and
retrieval strategies, selective attention,
and rules or strategies for problem
solving are all useful control processes
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Analysis
– an aspect of impaired analysis is that
the elderly are more likely to stick to
preconceived ideas rather than consider
and change their minds
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Retrieval
– another control process, the ability to
recall the name of childhood
acquaintance, worsens with age
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Reminding People of What They Know
– priming
• preparation that makes it easier to perform some action—
it is easier to retrieve an item from memory if we are
given a clue about it beforehand
– explicit memory
• memory that is easy to retrieve on demand (as in a
specific test), usually with words
• most explicit memory involves consciously learned words,
data, and concepts
– implicit memory
• unconscious or automatic memory that is usually stored
via habits, emotional responses, routine procedures, and
various sensations
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Brain Slowdown
– the elderly react more slowly than young adults
• reduced production of neurotransmitters—
glutamate, acetylcholine, serotonin and
dopamine—that allow a nerve impulse to jump
across the synapse from one neuron to another
– speed is crucial for many aspects of cognition,
especially working memory, since information
stays in working memory for only a short time
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Staying Healthy and Alert
– secondary aging—illness and
conditions— that affect one
person but not another
• secondary aging is a major
reason for the remarkable
variation in intellectual ability
between one older person and
another
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Ageism
– cognitive decline is rooted not in the
older person’s body and brain but in the
surrounding social context—cultural
attitudes can lead directly to age
differences in cognition
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Stereotype Threat
– does most harm when individuals
internalize other people’s prejudices and
react with helplessness
• if the elderly fear losing their minds
because they have internalized the idea
that old age always bring dementia, that
fear may become a stereotype threat,
undermining normal thinking
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Ageism Among Scientist
– scientists measure age differences in
memory in the same way they studied
memory in general—in laboratories
– these factors work against older adults,
who tend to perform best in familiar
settings
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The Usual: Information Processing After Age 65
• Beyond Ageism
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Loss of intellectual ability in elderly people
has traditionally been called senility.
• the pathological loss of brain function is
known as dementia—literally, “out of
mind,” referring to severely impaired
judgment
– dementia
• irreversible loss of intellectual functioning
caused by organic brain damage or disease—
dementia becomes more common with age, but
it is abnormal and pathological even in the very
old
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)
– the most common cause of dementia,
characterized by gradual deterioration of
memory and personality and marked by
the information of plaques of betaamyloid protein and tangles in the brain
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease
– gender, ethnicity, and especially age affect a
person’s odds of developing Alzheimer’s
disease
– women are at greater risk than men
– fewer East Asians than Europeans develop
the disorder
– less common among those of African descent,
but life expectancy is far lower in Africa than in
any other continent and diagnosis of illness in
late adulthood is less certain
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Stages: From Confusion to Death
– Alzheimer’s disease usually runs
through a progressive course of five
identifiable stages, beginning with
forgetfulness and ending in death
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Stages: From Confusion to Death
– stage 1 – confused with normal aging
– stage 2 – generalized confusion—deficits in
concentration and short-term memory
– stage 3 – memory loss becomes dangerous
– stage 4 – full-time care
– stage 5 – unresponsive, no longer talking
stages take 10 to 15 years
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Many Strokes
– the second most common cause of dementia
is a stroke
– repeated brain damage leads to:
• vascular dementia (VaD), also called multiinfarct dementia (MID)
– a form of dementia characterized by sporadic, and
progressive, loss of intellectual functioning caused by
repeated infarcts, or temporary obstructions of blood
vessels, which prevent sufficient blood from reaching
the brain
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Subcotical Dementias
– forms of dementia that begin with impairments in
motor ability (which is governed by the
subcortex) and produce cognitive impairment in
later stages—Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s
disease, and multiple sclerosis are subcortical
dementias
– Parkinson’s Disease
• a chronic, progressive disease that is
characterized by muscle tremor and rigidity, and
sometimes dementia, caused by a reduction of
dopamine production in the brain
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Reversible Dementia
– dementia caused by medication,
inadequate nutrition, alcohol abuse,
depression, or other mental illness can
sometimes be reversed
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Overmedication and Undernourishment
– without considering interaction, many
drugs commonly taken by the elderly slow
down mental processes
– inadequate nutrition is connected to
overmedication, many medications reduce
absorption of vitamins
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Psychological Illness
– elderly people have a lower incidence of
psychological disorders—the rate of
anxiety, antisocial personality disorder,
bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and
depression are lower after age 65
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The Impaired: Dementia
• Prevention and Treatment
– there is no cure or prevention for dementia
– many lifestyle factors that slow down
senescence also delay the onset of
dementia
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The Optimal: New Cognitive Development
• older people are more interested than
young in the arts, in children, and in
human experiences
• the elderly are “social witnesses” to life
• aware of interdependent of the
generations
• there are gains and losses at every stage
of life
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The Optimal: New Cognitive Development
• Aesthetic Sense and Creativity
– elderly people seem to gain a greater
appreciation of nature and aesthetic
experience
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The Optimal: New Cognitive Development
• The Life Review
– an examination of one’s own part in life,
engaged in by many elderly people
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The Optimal: New Cognitive Development
• Wisdom
– a cognitive perspective characterized by
a broad, practical, comprehensive
approach to life’s problems, reflecting
timeless truths rather than immediate
expediency—seems to be more
common in the elderly than in the young
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