Psychology of aging' Lecture 5: Intelligence and problemsolving

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Psychology of aging.Lecture 5 Intelligence and
problem-solving

• Dr Louise Phillips

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What is meant by 'intelligence'?

• Psychometric intelligence measured by
  intelligence tests.
• Practical intelligence ability to deal with
  everyday situations
• Emotional intelligence coping with the emotional
  demands of self and others
• Creativity innovating, creating novel ideas

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Aging and psychometric intelligence
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Are age changes in psychometric intelligence
general or specific?

• Weschler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS)
• 'Performance' and 'verbal' subscales
• Gradual age declines in verbal tests
• e.g. Vocabulary, Similarities
• Rapid age declines in performance tests
• e.g. Block Design, Picture Arrangement

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WAIS-R vocabulary and block design scores from
age 20 to 80. (Weschler, 1981)
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Fluid and crystallised intelligence

• Two factor theory of intelligence.
• Horn Cattell (1967)
• Fluid intelligence novel problem solving
• Crystallised intelligence knowledge
• Applies to many everyday skills, not just
  psychometric tests.
• Differently affected by age

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Fluid intelligence

• Ability to be
• Flexible and adaptive
• Responsive to novel situations
• Baltes
• Mechanics of intelligence
• Biological predisposition?
• Effortful and attention-demanding
• Age-related deficits.
• e.g. Ravens Matrices

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Crystallised intelligence

• Knowledge acquired through life experience
• E.g. information, language, skills
• Baltes
• Pragmatics of intelligence
• Culturally determined
• Often relatively automatic
• Age-invariant, or age improvements
• e.g. Mill Hill vocabulary test

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Possible explanations for age effects

• Intact crystallised ability
• Impaired fluid ability

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1) Cohort effects

• Cross-sectional evidence
• Linear age differences in fluid ability from age
  20
• Problem generational differences
• Longitudinal evidence
• Age decline in fluid ability, begin at 50
• Problem practice effects
• Cohort effects partly explain cross-sectional age
  differences in fluid intelligence.

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2) Slowed information processing

• Salthouse (1985) general slowing hypothesis
• Age declines due to slowed information
  processing.
• Hertzog (1989)
• Age declines in fluid ability explained by
  variance in processing speed.
• Likely slowed processing contributes to age
  differences in fluid intelligence.

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3) Use it or lose it! Disuse hypothesis.

• Age declines prevented if use skills.
• Predicts declines in fluid ability but not
  crystallised ability
• Some positive evidence
• Schooler et al. (1999) complex occupations
  reduce cognitive changes with age.
• Some null results
• Hertzog et al. (1999) no relationship between
  intellectual engagement and cognitive changes
  with age.

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4) Health

• Poor health predicts poorer fluid ability
• Schaie cardiovascular disease associated with
  age-declines in fluid intelligence
• Age changes in health predict some (but not all)
  of age effects on fluid intelligence.

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Other factors predicting maintained cognition

• Above-average education, complex job
• Flexible personality
• Engagement in social-cognitive activities
• Reading, travel, education, clubs

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Practical problem solving and emotional
intelligence

• Real world tasks

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Practical intelligence and aging.

• Practical intelligence relates to fluid and
  crystallised abilities.
• Does practical intelligence change with age?
• Decline in old age in some practical tasks e.g.
  map-reading.
• Stability in knowledge-based skills e.g. accuracy
  of investment.
• Improvement in some social problems e.g. advice
  given to bereaved friend.

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Practical problem-solving

• Example
• A 73-year-old woman collects her pension from the
  post office once a week, which means crossing a
  very busy road. However, she has recently
  started using a walking stick and finds crossing
  the road very difficult and frightening. What
  should she do?

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Age, emotions and problem-solving
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Role of emotions in real problems

• Blanchard-Fields, Jahnke Camp (1995)
• Problems with different emotional content
• Low emotion e.g. defective goods
• High emotion e.g. caring for ill parent
• For high emotion problems
• Young use cognitive analysis
• Old manage emotional reactions

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Age effects on emotional intelligence(Phillips,
MacLean Allen, 2002)
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Creativity
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Creativity

• Ability to generate innovative ideas
• Assumption young more creative
• Yet some older adults high creativity
• Older participants worse on some standardised
  creativity tasks
• e.g. name unusual uses for a brick.
• Age peak of creativity depends on field

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Age differences in creative output
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Conclusions

• Aging causes
• Declines in fluid intelligence
• No effect on crystallised intelligence
• Influences on age differences in intelligence
• Cohort effects, slowing, health, social
  functioning
• Age effects on practical problem-solving
  creativity
• Depends on domain of measurement.
• No age effect on emotional intelligence.

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Questions

• Explain what crystallised and fluid intelligence
  are, and how they are affected by age.
• Outline and evaluate some possible reasons for
  age changes in fluid intelligence.
• Outline the pattern of age effects on practical
  and emotional intelligence.
• What are the effects of aging on creativity?