International Journal of School and Cognitive Psychology
Open Access

Cognitive Aging

The study of cognitive function in gerontology is considered relevant because it is an important risk factor for other pathologies in the old age, such as physical disability and dependence, depression, and frailty, mainly because of early pathological changes in cognitive function which are considered a preclinical state that may progress to dementia.Cognitive ageing is the decline in cognitive processing that occurs as people get older. Age-related impairments in reasoning, memory and processing speed can arise during adulthood and progress into the elder years.Much of the experimental cognitive aging literature is based on age-comparative studies, which typically contrast a group of young adults (typically college students) with convenience samples of community-dwelling older adults in their sixties and seventies. It should be recognized that such comparisons are fraught by the problem that it is often unreasonable to assume that the two age groups can be adequately matched for other status variables that might provide a rival explanation for any observed age difference on the dependent variable. This creates particular problems for identifying the mechanisms that may be implicated in age-related decline from young adulthood into old age. Age-comparative designs are also inadequate in explaining individual differences in age changes.