Individual Differences

Question 1

What is the cognitive enhancement hypothesis

Answer 1

there may be some interventions that can stave off decline in cognitive functioning

Question 2

social interaction, physical exercise, volunteering, mental exercises are all things that may help

Answer 2

with the bump needed to delay decline

Question 3

After tapping into the Barlin study of aging to look at !Q, cognitiion and senses, what correlations were found?

Answer 3

• Age was strongly negatively correlated with sensorimotor function, which is so imp to high level cog function
• Sensory function has the strongest correlation with intelligence, the better sensory function, the higher the IQ scores
• Sociobiological factors had a low to moderate relationship with IQ
• When they took sensory motor out of the equation there was no longer a correlation between intelligence and age
o SO SENSORY FUNCTION IS CRUTIAL TO HIGHER FUNCTION
o So this would certainly be an area of importance to study and give (glasses, eye surgery, hearing aids) to older adults

Question 4

What is the relationship between genes and intelligence ?

Answer 4

very heritable,  Correlations between monozygotic twins were about a .85 – which is a heavy genetic component. Dizygotic twins were at .6. Other sibling had .4, and siblings reared apart was .2.

 Found indications of genetic influence, however, with perceptual speed, it appears to be less heritable

Question 5

o Non-social elderly showing much more

Answer 5

cognitive decline than others

Question 6

seems to be a link between psychological distress and…

Answer 6

brain damage

Question 7

explain the study looking at aerobic exercise and cognitive functions

Answer 7

o Not active participants; half were encouraged to do aerobic exercise (walking) over 6 months, the other did stretching & toning over 6 months
o Theres been links between executive function and exercise
o After 6 months, they had participants complete a series of tasks to measure executive function
 Task switching: ability to move from one task to another; depending on executive function abilities some are able to do that easier than others
 DV: reaction time: time to switch task
 Aerobic exercise improved significantly in executive function but those in the toning did not improve at all
 Odd things about the study: the toning group started out much better. Its possible that the toning group started out so well (low) that there was no room to get any faster

Question 8

colombe and kramer did a meta-analysis looking at the effect sizes to see if it was EF or maybe other processes

Answer 8

 Largest effect size were in tasks using exclusively executive function
 Followed by controlled processing
 Big differences for spatial orientation
 Speed of processing was not different
 The strongest link between cognitive processing and aerobic exercise was with executive functioning

Question 9

what two factors affects task relevance?

Answer 9

meaningfulness and familiarity of environment