What happens to this structure as we age? That was the question Timothy A. Salthouse, Brown-Forman professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, investigated in a new study appearing in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. His findings advance psychologists\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 understanding of the complexities of the aging brain.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are three hypotheses about how this works,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Salthouse. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One is that abilities become more strongly integrated with one another as we age.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That theory suggests the general factor influences cognitive aging the most. The second\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbased on the idea that connectivity among different brain regions lessens with age\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153is almost the opposite: that the changes in cognitive abilities become more rather than less independent with age.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The third was Salthouse\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hypothesis: The structure remains constant throughout the aging process.<\/p>\n Using a sample of 1,490 healthy adults ages 18 to 89, Salthouse performed analyses of the scores on 16 tests of five cognitive abilities\u00e2\u20ac\u201dvocabulary, reasoning, spatial relations, memory, and perceptual speed. The primary analyses were on the changes in the test scores across an interval of about two and a half years.<\/p>\n The findings confirmed Salthouse\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hunch: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The effects of aging on memory, on reasoning, on spatial relations, and so on are not necessarily constant.\u00c2\u00a0 But the structure within which these changes are occurring does not seem to change as a function of age<\/strong>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In normal, healthy people, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the direction and magnitude of change may be different\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re 18 or 88, he says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But it appears that the qualitative nature of cognitive change remains the same throughout adulthood<\/strong>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n The study could inform other research investigating \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what allows some people to age more gracefully than others,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Salthouse. \u00c2\u00a0That is, do people who stay mentally sharper maintain their ability structures better than those who become more forgetful or less agile at reasoning? And in the future, applying what we know about the structures of change could enhance \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interventions that we think will improve cognitive functioning\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at any age or stage of life.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: As we get older, our cognitive abilities change, improving when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re younger and declining as we age. Scientists posit a hierarchical structure… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[16,18,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/splash\/smilingwoman4.jpg\" "\\"aging")
As we get older, our cognitive abilities change, improving when we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re younger and declining as we age. Scientists posit a hierarchical structure within which these abilities are organized<\/strong>. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lowest\u00e2\u20ac\u009d level\u00e2\u20ac\u201d measured by specific tests, such as story memory<\/strong> or word memory<\/strong>; the second level, which groups various skills involved in a category of cognitive ability, such as memory, perceptual speed, or reasoning<\/strong>; and finally, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153general,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or G, factor, a sort of statistical aggregate of all the thinking abilities<\/strong>.<\/p>\n