It must be emphasized that at the same time, at the very beginning of the 20th century, life expectancy in developed countries was slowly beginning to grow, and initial projections of population aging highlighted the importance of the study of aging.
Cognitive variability pathological aging windows#
The most important aspect of this Mental Test Movement was, however, that it opened the windows to the study of intelligence and cognitive abilities, aptitudes and competences not only in children and adolescents, but throughout a life cycle. This was performed by the North American Lewis Terman, who not only re-formulated the methods in all Binet ages, but also adapted them to adults. Since these methods were developed to be administered to children, however, a continuation of Binet’s works was necessary. This movement started with the first attempt to establish an empirical definition of intelligence under the efforts of Binet and Binet and Simon. Nevertheless, as Schaie emphasized, the Mental Testing Movement-already established by psychologists-could be considered the core of the study of cognitive or intellectual competences, with individual differences attributed to age as well as along a life course. Galton at this time was already suggesting the importance of longitudinal studies, arguing not only that in cross-sectional studies age differences are confounded with cohort differences but also that inter-individual differences in intra-individual change can only be identified with such longitudinal designs (see ). About nine thousand individuals (men and women from age 5 to 80) were assessed. This essay was the background for establishing his Anthropometric. Perhaps the first empirical researcher on aging was the British human geneticist Francis Galton (1822–1911), who in 1883 published “Inquiries into human faculty and its development”, devoted to the analysis of a set of physical and psychological functions from sensitivity to mental imagery. Main historical antecedents in the study of aging.Īuthors agree that an early pioneer in the scientific study of aging in the 19th century was the Belgian statistician and astronomer Adolphe Quêtelet, who said: “man is born, grows up, and dies, according to certain laws which have never been properly investigated, either as a whole or in the mode of their mutual reactions” thus, some “proper investigations” about changes along aging will be described here (p. The longitudinal evidence and experimental trials have shown the benefits of aerobic physical exercise and an intellectually engaged lifestyle, suggesting that bio-psycho-socioenvironmental factors concurrently with age predict or determine both positive or negative change or stability in cognition in later life.
Furthermore, intellectual functioning in healthy individuals seems to decline rather late in life, if ever, as shown in longitudinal studies where age-related decline of cognitive functioning occurs later in life than indicated by cross-sectional studies. The most important studies, searching for long-term patterns of stability and change of cognitive measures across a life span and in old age, have shown a great range of inter-individual variability in cognitive functioning changes attributed to age. The aim was to review not only longitudinal, cross-sectional or cohort studies, but also by intervention program evaluations. Here, a review of aging databases was conducted, looking for the most relevant studies carried out on cognitive functioning in healthy older adults. The study of cognitive change across a life span, both in pathological and healthy samples, has been heavily influenced by developments in cognitive psychology as a theoretical paradigm, neuropsychology and other bio-medical fields this alongside the increase in new longitudinal and cohort designs, complemented in the last decades by the evaluation of experimental interventions.
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