Adult age differences in deductive reasoning processes.
To explore deductive inference processes on concept learning a problem was given to individuals from four groups: younger adults (mean age 20.0 years), middle-aged adults (41.4 years), and two groups of older adults (65.4 and 71.5 years). The first three groups were college students or college graduates; the last group was drawn from the local community. Likelihood of solution was lower in the older groups; the two older groups did not differ, not did the younger and middle-aged groups. Analyses of hypotheses generated during the task showed that those who failed to solve the problem, whatever their age, overlooked evidence that a dimension as relevant (but only when attention had not been drawn previously to that dimension) and failed to respond appropriately when a dimension was shown to be irrelevant.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011340:Problem Solving