Intelligence

Abstract

Our overall coverage of adult age differences in cognitive processes will be broadened in this chapter by reviewing research that traditionally approaches cognition in terms of individual differencs in higher mental processes. Our emphasis will be on the assessment of individual differences in higher mental activities, rather than on the systematic manipulation of experimental variables. Specifically, our concern is with intelligence as the concept has been identified over nearly 100 years of paychological research. Although some of the research on adult age differences in intelligence has been of an experimental nature, in the sense that intellectual variables served as the dependent variables in laboratory-based studies, the fact remains that most aging studies on intelligence have been pychometrically oriented. That is, age differences in cognitive abilities were assessed by means of an intelligence test.