Week 1 Flashcards
What is crystallized intelligence?
Crystallized intelligence refers to skills, ability, and knowledge that is overlearned, well-practiced, and familiar.
Examples of crystalized intelligence
riding a bike, or vocabulary
How do older people perform on crystalized ability tests?
They improve by .02 to 0.03 standard deviations in their 60s and 70ds, meaning older adults do better surrounding tasks such as these.
What is fluid intelligence?
Refers to abilities involving problem-solving and reasoning about things that are less familiar and are independent of what one has learned.
What are fluid cognitive brain domains/functions?
executive function, processing speed, memory
Processing speed refers to cognitive abilities that are performed as well as
the speed of motor responses
When does processing speed begin to decline
begins to decline in the 30s
Attention refers to
To the ability to concentrate and focus on specific stimuli.
Simple auditory attention span (immediate memory) as measured by repetition of a string of digits shows what effect in later life?
decline
What is selective attention?
Selective attention is the ability to focus on specific information in the environment while ignoring irrelevant information.
What is divided attention?
Divided attention is the ability to focus on multiple tasks simultaneously, such as talking on the phone while preparing a meal.
How do older adults perform in selective, divided and working attention compared to younger people?
They perform worse
Age-related memory changes may be related to what three changes?
may be related to slow processing speed, reduced ability to ignore irrelevant information, and decreased use of strategies to improve learning and memory
Declarative memory is
conscious recollection of facts and events
Semantic memory is
involves fund of information, language usage, and practical knowledge, for example, knowing the meaning of words
Episodic memory/autobiographical memory refers to
Memory for personally experienced events that occur at a specific place and time.
What are the changes in episodic memory and semantic memory over time.
Episodic memory shows lifelong declines, while semantic memory shows late-life decline
Implicit/nondeclarative memory is what?
Memory of information that is recalled events and information without conscious effort to remember them
procedural memory
a type of nondeclarative memory and involves memory for motor and cognitive skills. ex. tying shoes
Language is a complex cognitive domain composed of what two types of intelligence?
crystallized and fluid intelligence
What happens to language ability as someone ages
stays relatively intact and vocabulary can improve over time
What is the term for a group of cognitive functions involving the ability to understand space in two and 3 dimensions?
visuospatial abilities
Whats an example of visuospatial construction? What happens to it as we age?
Assembling funiture and it declines over time
What generally happens to visuospatial abilities?
declines over time
Executive functioning refers to
Capacities that allow a person to successfully engage in independent, appropriate, purposive, and self-serving behaviour.
executive functioning includes cognitive abilities like
ability to self-monitor, plan, organize, reason, be mentally flexible, and problem-solve
Executive abilities requiring a speeded motor component increase/or decrease as we age
decrease
Research has shown that concept formation, abstraction, and mental flexibility….
Decline with age, especially after 70
Brain changes with aging: grey matter volume begins to decrease after age
20
Describe the grey volume decline.
Age-related changes in the temporal lobes are more moderate and involve decreases in the volume of the hippocampus.
Possible cause of grey volume decline?
Cell death as we age
White matter change compared to grey matter change?
White matter volume decreases are much greater than grey matter volume decreases with increasing age
Older adults and driving data show they are at a higher risk of vehicle accidents. Why could this be?
due to cognitive impairment or musculoskeletal disorders, vision issues, medications or other illnesses
In spite of the driving data many older adults with normal cognition…
do not experience a decline in driving ability
What is the lifestyle cognition hypothesis state?
Maintaining an active lifestyle and engaging in certain activities may help prevent age-associated cognitive decline and dementia.
What are some support for this hypothesis?
Older adults with high cognitive function participate in more activities than those with low cognitive functioning.
What is the cognitive reserve hypothesis?
The hypothesis states some individuals have a greater ability to withstand pathologic brain changes. Example: amyloid protein to great brain reserve.
What environmental factors protect against clinical manifestations of brain disease?
high education, participation in activities, high SES
Passive reserve refers to
genetically determined characteristics such as brain volume and the number of neurons and synapses present
Active reserve refers to
the brain’s potential for plasticity and reorganization in neural processing, allowing for compensation of neuropathologic changes
The scaffolding theory of again and cognition?
proposes that alternative neural circuits are recruited to achieve a cognitive goal
Cognitive retraining research has demonstrated that subjects can be trained to do better on cognitive testing. How long do these improvements last?
can be maintained for years
Model of cognitive aging: Sensory deficit hypothesis states
lack of adequate sensory input over a prolonged period is likely to result in cognitive deterioration due to the preceding neuronal atrophy
sensory deficit hypothesis: increased cognitive damage leads to
impaired behavioural performance
Sensory deficit hypothesis: would state that the speed of pressing goes down
because of general slowing of cognitive processes
Inhibitory deficit hypothesis?
Efficient processing requires one to attend to information and suppress irrelevant information.
What types of models focus on memory?
Behavioural models
Recollection deficits are due to a failure to consciously
recollect information
Older adults are more likely to use familiarity than
conscious recollection
What are binding deficits?
Declines are due to failure to bind different elements together- older adults have issues combining to unrelated things together after they’ve seen it paired
What do age-related differences in brain region activation show?
Evidence for both positive and negative brain activation
Explain the hemispheric asymmetry in brain activation in older adults.
Evidence of greater bilaterality in older compared to younger adults
PASA refers to what?
Posterior to anterior shift in again- older adults show greater activation of prefrontal cortex than occipital lobe
Dedifferentiation: less selective neural activity in older than younger adults mean what?
brain regions that ARE SPECIALIZED FOR PARTICULAR VISUAL CATEGORIES IN YOUNGER ADULTS SHOW LESS SELECTIVITY IN OLDER ADULTS
older adults show failure to suppress unimportant information. What part of the brain is responsible for supression
DMN is responsible for internal thoughts
When do older adults have a harder time suppressing information?
When they are trying to do more cognitively demanding tasks
What are the methodological issues in old people studies?
Participants (selection bias, high SES, heterogeneous)
Cross-sectional studies (cohort effect)
Longitudinal studies (attrition, practice effect)
