Independence of age-related influences on cognitive abilities across the life span.
Age-related increases in childhood and age-related decreases in adulthood have been reported for a wide variety of cognitive variables, but relatively little research has addressed the question of the independence of these influences. In this project, cross-sectional life span data (age 5 to 94 years) from the nationally representative sample used to establish the norms for the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery (R. W. Woodcock & M. B. Johnson, 1989, 1990) were subjected to several types of analyses. The results indicated that the majority of age-related differences appear to be shared across different cognitive variables and are well predicted by individual differences in higher order factors. These findings suggest that the role of task-specific interpretations of developmental differences in cognition needs to be reevaluated to take into consideration the lack of independence of age-related influences on a variety of cognitive variables.
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 30332-0170, USA. tim.salthouse@psych.gatech.edu
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D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001076:Aptitude; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values