Cognition: “Cognition is a group of mental processes that includes attention, memory, producing and understanding language, learning, reasoning, problem solving and decision-making.”
According to Wikipedia: Early adulthood is considered to be “responsible age”. This is the time when an individual transitions from an adolescent to an adult. Early adulthood covers age group of 20-40 years of age. This phase entitles a lot of cognitive changes. Where adolescence was the more into doing what was told as right, adulthood brings in the responsibility of judgment and implications. This is the phase where one settles his life by choosing preferred career, forming his own family, and doing other important activities. Tremendous cognitive changes take place during early adulthood.
Cognitive changes are considered in terms of few terms which help us ascertain what cognitive transitions an individual faces during his life-span development. These terms are capitulated as follows:
Fluid Intelligence: Fluid intelligence is the ability to form concepts, reason, identify similarities and differences.
It is the ability to understand complex relationships and solve problems. It declines with age if not excercised.
Crystal Intelligence: Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use skills, knowledge and experience. It increases with age and experience.
Reflective Thinking: Reflective thinking indicates that while solving any problem, when an individual reflects back to his/her past.
Relativistic Thinking: Relativistic thinking is which consideres that truth is relative and not constructed or absolute.
Pragmatic Thinking: Pragmatic thinking is dealing with problems in a logical and reasonable way.
On the basis of above terms following conclusions can be made:
1. Adolescents are generally engrossed in dualistic thinking which implies either one thing is good or bad. While they mature into young adults, they start to consider that that there are multiple opinions relating to a context and more than one opinion can be right depending on the situation. This is there transition from dualistic thinking to multiple thinking.
2. As adolescents, they were not as realistic in making their judgements but as young adults they start to make judgments which are more realistic, balanced and fair.
3. According to K. Warner Schaie, the young adults progress through two stages:
Achieving Stage: Young adults in this stage use their experience and skills to verify a situation and use these skills in achieving their goals.
Responsibility Stage: In this stage, young adults assume responsibility of carrying out their lives and the other ones related to them. They use logic and exhibit commitment.
Middle age is the period of stability, maturity and responsibility. This covers age group from 40 to 60 years of age. It is again divided into two decades of 40 to 50 and 50 to 60 years of age. This period is characterized by maintenance of self and career, concerns for next generation, and taking care of parents and other dependents. This period brings a lot of perseverance in people. They become more patient in their outlook of life. Following cognitive changes are evident in middle adults:
Intelligence
Intelligence in middle adults is more of crystallized than fluid. As discussed earlier, fluid intelligence is the one which enables a person to identify relationships, similarities, patterns. It also enables people to govern their decision by logic and reasoning. It is more logic oriented. While crystallized intelligence is one which enables a person to utilize his own skills and experience to solve problems. It is more contextual and relativistic.
There is decline in fluid intelligence in middle adults while there is increase in crystallized intelligence which make use of skills and past experience. They are less able to use logic and patterns but their judgements are more efficient and relativistic in the sense that they judge a situation in different contexts rather than sticking to a single solution.
Information Processing and Memory
As we know that the development of frontal lobes of brain happens in the 20s years of age of individuals, therefore the speed of processing of information is high in adolescence but due to ageing and maturity this processing of information declines and reaction time increases. Due to poor flow of blood in the body, oxygen supply is also relatively poor therefore memory also becomes less efficient than it used to be.
Religious Participation
During the period of 40 to 50, there are many tasks to do and generally people are more occupied into taking care of kids, helping them in choosing their career etc but as they grow more old, say between 50 to 60, many women leave their jobs and spend time at home. They generally tend to get involved in religious activities. Some may get involved in yoga and other activities to get relief from stress.
According to Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory, middle adults belong to experiential and contextual component. They take decisions on the basis of their experience and skills and do not also ignore the context in which decisions were taken in the past and the context of present situation. According to Sternberg, there are three components of intelligence:
Analytic: The middle adults are all the time analyzing their commitment levels and the demands made out of them. On the basis of that, sometimes they pursue some career changes if the pressure is too much.
Creative: Creativity is the ability to produce something that is productive and novel. Middle adults have more expertise and knowledge and that is why many writing masterpieces are made in middle adulthood.
Practical: Being practical means to adapting to new situations by developing new ways not known earlier. Middle adults developing the ability of being practical and that is why many scientific inventions are found in middle adulthood.
Old age is the period of completion of lifespan of an individual’s life. This is the time period where all major responsibilities are completed. During old age, many physical as well as cognitive changes are evident and they are also related in many ways. While most of the old people feel that they are most of the time disengaged from the activities they used to do when they were young, those activities are taken up by the younger generations and the “now old” people are usually left with plenty of time. They have to manage this time efficiently depending on which they will feel happiness or hopelessness. Following cognitive changes are seen in older adults:
1. Memory and Forgetting: According to many studies, it is evident that old people become less capable of remembering things, they easily forget names or things they have kept etc. But according to some other studies, it is conceived that older people are also not as forgetful as it is stereotyped. They say that old people are capable enough as the younger adults when they narrate some past incident or stories related to their grandparents and old friends. They can even tell the fine details of those events.
Instead of these findings, it can be concluded that though old people are still able to remember things, names of people and places, there is definitely a decline in their abilities. They are most likely not be able to remembers things like nonsense syllables, word lists and geometrical figures etc. They may also have problems understanding maps or place discretion.
There are two neurocognitive reasons for their cognitive decline which is as follows:
Sensory Acuity: We rely completely on our sensory acuity for our perceptual judgments. Old people have some decline in their sensory abilities and due to this reduction in acuity, their cognitive performance is also not as earlier is used to be.
Neural Speed: The neural speed in old age is slowed down and therefore due to this slow speed, old people take longer time to react and their cognitive performance suffer.
Alzheimer’s Disease
Dementia can happen any time in adulthood but it is more likely to happen after the age of 65. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s Disease which is progressive which generally happens to old people and damage brain cells in critical areas. That is why old people are bound to have memory losses, attention problems and depression. They can forget the names of their loved ones. They can forget what conversation was going on.
2. Intelligence: Intelligence is not a single trait. It is a mix of many traits and forms. On the basis of this, it is clear that intelligence does not diminish with age. Old people may have problem in some forms of intelligence but still they may have power over some other forms. Two types of intelligence can be correlated here:
Fluid Intelligence: Fluid intelligence is the ability to identify patterns, see relationships in words and numbers.
Crystallized Intelligence: Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use factual knowledge, skill and expertise.
It is seen that fluid intelligence is found much in younger adults and it declines as people age but crystallized intelligence is found much in older people and it increases with age. Crystallized intelligence reflects the ability of older people to use their skills and expertise earned over a period of time. They can handle many opinions at a time and can serve better in contextual terms better than younger adults.
From this perspective, it can be considered that there is no absolute decline in cognitive function in older age. Some types of cognitive functions improve with age too!
3. Hormonal Imbalance: In women, due to menopause (characterized with cessation of menstruation which result in infertility) there are slight decline in cognitive functions. Most women feel so lethargic and moody that they are not able to concentrate on their work. They find it difficult to be fully attentive. They report loss in interest in activities and feel like resting all the time. Though few studies suggest that mostly 70% of women feel no stress and pursue their work like usual.
4. Language Processing: There are some language and speech problems in old age. Older people are very often seen that they not able to recall a word they want to say. They are able to describe it but they are not able to particularly remember that word. They are also seen that they forget what conversation was going on. They may stop in the middle of the sentence and may seem to be thinking something. Then after some time they may continue their speech. These language problems are seen in the people over age 65. Though not all the older have same problems.
5. Social Loss and Isolation: According to disengagement theory, most old people leave their activities they used to perform earlier as the upcoming generation takes up those tasks. Therefore, old people feel that they are isolated. They feel neglected most of the time. Because their wards are busy in their life, they do not get time to interact with them and they feel stressed. For this reasons they may feel some cognitive loss like they may not be able to use their coping strategies like they used to earlier.
6. Retirement: Due to ageism stererotype, there is a fixed age for retirement. Though many people still find them active and willing to work. They are conventionally retired. Such a practice is followed due to serious physical illnesses that older people may experience like coronary artery disease, arthritis, rheumatism etc. due to this risk factors, it is assumed that older people should be given comfort at such age. Due to retirement, some people involve them in leisure time activities or supporting their wards in their business or by doing some other job but many people find themselves helpless and hopeless and develop some psychological problems.
7. Problem Solving: Problem solving involves proper identification of problems and understanding analysis of solutions and their implacability. Older people have knack on few matters that they feel so confident of handling. They are more able to take decisions in some matters like healthy, money, etc. but in some matters like education of the next generation they may feel that they lack in new knowledge of current professions and their requirements. They may be still confident in practically solving the problems where they can utilize their past experience and skills.
8. Death and Dying: According to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, there are sequence of events like denial, anger, bargaining, depression and Acceptance which generally prevails in all older adults. They first reject the notion of death, then they feel so angry about all this. Next stage is bargaining where they get their facts right. Then when they feel that death is inevitable, they get depressed but with due to conversations with others, they tend to accept this reality.
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