http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12078/pdf
Michael Ramscar, Peter Hendrix, Cyrus Shaoul, Petar
Milin, Harald Baayen
Department
of
Linguistics,
Universit
€ubingen
at
T€
Abstract
As adults age, their performance on many psychometric
tests changes systematically, a finding
that is widely taken to reveal that cognitive
information-processing capacities decline across adulthood.
Contrary to this, we suggest that older adults’ changing
performance reflects memory search
demands, which escalate as experience grows. A series of
simulations show how the performance
patterns observed across adulthood emerge naturally in
learning models as they acquire knowledge.
The simulations correctly identify greater variation in
the cognitive performance of older
adults, and successfully predict that older adults will
show greater sensitivity to fine-grained differences
in the properties of test stimuli than younger adults.
Our results indicate that older adults’
performance on cognitive tests reflects the predictable
consequences of learning on information-
processing, and not cognitive decline. We consider the
implications of this for our scientific and
cultural understanding of aging.
No comments:
Post a Comment