title: Age-Related Changes in Cognitive and Sensory Processing: Focus on Middle-Aged Adults.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this article was to examine the effects of age on (a) various psychophysical measures of threshold sensitivity and temporal processing in hearing, vision, and touch and (b) measures of cognitive processing as assessed by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Third Edition (Wechsler, 1997).
  
  
  METHODS
  Age group differences and correlations with age were examined, as were associations among age, sensory processing, and cognition.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The group analyses showed significant differences on most sensory and cognitive measures such that middle-aged adults performed significantly worse than young adults and significantly better than older adults. Correlations of performance with age were also significant when analyses were restricted to just the young and middle-aged adults. Last, sensory processing, but not age, was significantly correlated with cognitive processing when analyses were restricted to just the young and middle-aged adults.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Middle-aged adults experienced declines in both sensory and cognitive processing. The declines in both the cognitive and sensory domains were such that, for most measures in each domain, the performance of middle-aged adults fell somewhere between that of young and older adults.
authors.forename: Larry E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Humes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D055698:Touch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014888:Wechsler Scales; D055815:Young Adult