The Elements of Cognitive Aging

Abstract

This book provides a qualitative overview (using graphical and classical meta-analysis) of the vast literature on aging and speeded tasks—bringing together, almost everything we know about age and processing speed. The book investigates age-related slowing in elementary tasks (including updated parameters for the Aging Human Information Processor) and tasks of executive control (inhibition, task shifting, and task coordination). It examines broader regularities in the age-related effects of these tasks that might hint at underlying brain-related mechanisms, while keeping out a keen eye for alternative explanations (such as increased caution with age). It models the course of speed-of-processing over the lifespan and investigates the influence of generational differences on mental speed. Finally, it examines the influence of age-related mental slowing on other aspects of cognition (working memory, executive control episodic memory, aspects of fluid intelligence), and provides the first systematic review of age-speed-cognition mediation in a longitudinal context.

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