Lecture 4

Question 1

Different types of intelligence

Answer 1

Psychometric- weschler adult intelligence scale WAIS problem-solving fast decline, verbal is crystallised

Practical - mapreading decreases, investment knowledge and advice increases

Emotional intelligence/problems solving - increased crystallised

Creative - is crystallised

Question 2

Attention - selective

Answer 2

Selective
- what information to select too is essential as WM is limited capacity assessed by visual search tasks older decrease when Increase in distractor items

• suggests related to difficulties inhibiting the irrelevant information (hasher and jacks 1988)

Question 3

Attention - switching

Answer 3

Switching - older slower may be related to aerobic fitness related to decreased flexibility

findings that older people decreased ability at inhibiting irrelevant information and poor at focusing

Question 4

Attention - divided

Answer 4

Divided - older have increased difficulty with distracting background noise, competition between different info sources

Question 5

Attention - sustain

Answer 5

Sustain - ability to maintain attention for long periods deteriorates the same for younger and older

• older not as accurate detecting targets relates to physical fitness
• older air-traffic controllers must retire in the US at 55 years old

Question 6

STM storage

Answer 6

• 7+ or -2 for one minute digit span test
• little age affect - no change with age for capacity
• manipulation WM digit span say it backwards required storage and manipulation significant age declines as complexity increases e.g. adding more digits - age related declines increase

Question 7

Prospective memory

Answer 7

Remembering to remember

EPPM. remember to buy milk
TBPM remember to check blood pressure regularly

worse in a lab but better in real life e.g. remembering to call experimenter every hour

Question 8

Ltm

Answer 8

Procedural -rehearsed so not affected with age
Semantic- facts and knowledge little change
Explicit memory- all types of memory that require conscious effort for retrieval declines with age
Implicit- no required effort no declines
Episodic- memory for events decrease with age autobiographical is preserved though

Question 9

Executive abilities first to decline

Answer 9

• These are conscious goal driven strategic processes that control and integrate other cognitive activities (Byran and Luszcz 2002) ability to be flexible and adaptive
• Umbrella term for specific cognitive functions or executive committee (baddely 1998)
• Abstraction of logical rules mental flexibility planning WN inhibition of information and responses
• Declines in test of intelligence/attention thought to be the result of declines in one or more executive functions

Question 10

Abstraction of logical rules Wisconsin card sorting task

grant and berg 1993

Answer 10

• Required to match each card to one of the stimulus cards without being told how
• Six categories unknown to participants, after every 10 correct responses rule changed.
• they are required to discover each category and respond accordingly
• sorting into previous correct but now incorrect perseverative error- older increase of these errors (arbuckle and gold 93) less mental flexibility /ability to adjust

Question 11

Planning tower of London

Shallice 1982

Answer 11

• Move beads to match goal arrangement presented by experimenter one minute is allowed
• must look ahead to plan for future positions (lezak 1995)
• best solution is when least amount of moves required, older significantly increase time to make first move and increase time to solve once 1st move done (Andres and Van Der linden 2000)

Question 12

WM self ordered pointing task

Petrides and mimer 1982

Answer 12

Presented with 16 visual patterns- instructed to point to one of patterns - but different for each

Need to remember which already selected when scan new display - older adults significant more pointing errors (shimamura and jurica 1994)

Question 13

Inhibitory processing - hayling test (burgess and shallice 1996)

Answer 13

Sentences with missing word, cues by rest of sentences

Required to inhibit cued response in favour of word the makes no sense in sentence context

Older more inhibition errors and take long term to generate alternative words (Andres and van der linden ,2000)

Question 14

However inhibition is multidimensional

Answer 14

Different tests to measures inhibition of different thoughts/responses
Problem inhibiting irrelevant info from WM, age rested change (hasher and sacks, 1988)
Can be found in external (visual scene) or internal stimuli (own responses)
Ageing might affect subtypes differently (pottor et al 06 08 12)