Exam II Flashcards
Cognitive aging is what kind of lifelong process?
Developmental, occurring from birth to death
Cognitive aging occurs within a frame work of what?
Gains, declines, and stability
Cognitive aging is impacted by what?
Diet, exercise, health habits, and education
What are other factors that affect cognition?
-Neurobiological influences (related to disease process, sensory systems, auditory/visual systems)
-Affective influences (anxiety, fatigue, pain, depression)
Sensory processes
Transmits stimuli from environment to neutral structures, older age declines auditory and visual processing
Perception
Assign meaning to stimuli, older adults utilize situational context and experience to maintain perceptual abilities necessary to function
Sustained attention
Direct to single task, no change comparing younger to older adults
Selective attention
Direct to a task while simultaneously using resources to ignore distracting info, probably no age change
Alternating attention
Switching between two or more tasks, older adults have more difficulty
Divided attention
Allocate attentional resources to two or more tasks at the same time, declines with age
Types of memory
Sensory, short-term, working, long-term
MOST decline with age!!
Sensory memory
Stores incoming info for a very short time
Short-term memory
15-20 seconds stored without rehearsal
Working memory
Stores, maintains, actively manipulates information
Long-term memory (2 kinds)
Declarative- verbal based memory
Semantic- general world knowledge not linked to a specific learning episode
Procedural (non-declarative) memory
-Stores information for motor based skills and behaviors
-Well preserved in later life
Prospective memory
Remember future oriented or scheduled tasks without the use of external memory aids
Executive functioning
-Reasoning, decision making, problem solving, judgement, abstract thought, and logic
-SIGNIFICANT differences from younger to older as task complexity increases as additional cognitive resources are needed
Problem-solving
Older adults tend to use less efficient strategies, persist longer in using erroneous solutions, and produce more errors
Everyday cognition
Utilize cognitive processes in real world contexts, fewer age related differences
Language production and speech comprehension
Older adults OUTPERFORM younger in message production and discourse- like storytelling
Expertise
-High level of skill/knowledge in one area – problem solving, reasoning, memory
-Maintains in later life and helps compensate for other deficits
Implicit processing
-Unintentional, occurs with awareness, effortful- requires moderate to substantial cognitive resources
-Minimal age young to old
Explicit processing
-Intentional, occurs with awareness, effortful – requires moderate to substantial cognitive resources
-Some age related decline in skill