The Evolution Of Cognitive Skills Essay

Cognitive aging is the term to describe changes in cognition with age. While Salthouse (2004) found that with cognitive aging comes cognitive decline regardless of the individual, Hayden and partners (2011) found that most (65%) elderly persons showed slow decline that does not substantially affect abilities, 27% experienced moderate decline, and only 8% showed substantial cognitive decline. These new findings show that in fact there may be individual variability when it comes to cognitive aging. One factor shown to affect cognitive aging is race (Glymour and Manly, 2008). Thus, in this paper we will review and analyze findings pertaining to cognitive aging as related by race to better understand this relationship and will also discuss suggestions for future research.

Lifespan development is a scientific approach to questions about growth, change, and stability in physical, cognitive, social, and personality characteristics at all ages from conception to death (Feldman, 2014 Seventh Edition). In reading the chapter I found three theories very interesting evolutionary, cognitive, and psychodynamic. The reason I find evolutionary perspective because I feel as though this perspective or theory is the base of study. When we are born we have genetic make-up for two people with two family trees. The blending is sometimes a hard transition. We all have been around child and seen their parents’ characteristics in the child. Evolutionary perspective attributes to the genetic inheritance from our ancestors, contending that genes determine not only traits such as skin and eye color, but certain personality traits and social behaviors (Feldman, 2014 Seventh Edition). We all see and new edition in a family and sit and try and pick out which parent the child looks like. We are a very diverse place. The traits and genetic studies are a constant for new developments and updated current practices. Education on social norms of new populations are a must. As we learned throughout history change is a shock. We need to educate and adapt to the societal new comers. Problems occur in the lag between establishment of new members and educative process which has caused some havoc for community members. With more and more cultural differences and blending there

Quadagno (2014) discusses ways cognitive abilities differ from young-adults, middle-old adults and oldest old adults. Cognitive decline can also be affected by conditions such as stroke, depression, diabetes, auditory, and vision problems. Older adults may also encounter age related cognitive decline in their daily lives. Cognitive abilities such as processing speed, episodic memory, working memory and dual task processing are abilities that researchers are aiming to improve in older adults (Basak, et al, 2008; Quadagno, 2014).

As the Baby Boomer era has now grown up, there is subsequently a large increase in the number of elderlies in the United States. One of the largest generations reaching elderly status also brings an increase in curiosity on their health; particularly their mental health. With nearly 69% of practicing psychologist working with older patients, it is clear that there is a particular interest in how the elderly behave and think (Kring & Johnson, 2015). This curiosity and prevalence of elderlies brings along an increase awareness of commonly thought “elderly specific” illnesses and disorders. One major area that is often associated with the elderly is memory loss, more appropriately labeled as Dementia. However, not all areas of Dementia are reserved for the elderly.

Aging is a natural process of life however, studies show that there are some age-related decline in cognitive development. As a person grows older some brain cell dies, shrink, or weaken and cause some decline in brain functions. Some cognitive processes include attention, working memory, long-term memory, perception, and executive control. The material will explain the effect of aging on cognitive development by providing scholarly research proof.

An experiment performed on young and old people showed that when the participants were told negative stereotypes about their intellect they performed worse on memory tests than those who were not told a stereotype. This research concludes that negative stereotypes have a negative effect on a person’s mental capacity and increases their mental aging. The finding that negative thoughts about elders magnifies their mental decline is seen in another experiment performed on older American and Chinese people to test the mental aging across cultures. The Chinese elders, who are generally optimistic about their age, performed higher on different skill tests than the American elders, who are generally unhappy with aging, did. This shows that aging may be due to social reasons as well as natural aging. Ageism occurs almost everywhere, including hospitals and doctor’s offices. Many health professionals do not want to work with older patients because of the general stereotypes for old people and they sometimes do not receive the proper care and treatment that they need. This discrimination in the health care system adds to the decline of physical and mental health in older people. People who believe the age stereotypes are more prone to becoming those stereotypes. Getting rid of these negative stereotypes and not viewing aging as bad can improve a person’s mental and physical health as they age and help them live longer. Elders who tend to fall into the negative stereotypes tend to have a higher mortality rate than those who do not. Pushing positive views of aging and older people can greatly increase their overall quality of life. There are many different ways to eliminate negative views of aging. Being more open to the idea of growing old and retiring, shining light on the benefits of a great life after retirement, having strong social bonds, educating people of all ages

When you get older one part of your brain grows with you and deteriorates as you get older. This part of your brain is called “hippocampus”. That is the reason that when you go shopping with your nanny she forgets half of the list and she also forgot to write it down. The elderly also don’t have cognitive memory because you can ask them their original cheesecake recipe and they have it written down because they can’t remember. I would advise that the elderly play regularly memory games so they can’t forget. The elderly can play luminosity which is a website that challenges your brain. It also includes memory games which are a big help for the elderly. According to an ABC news article younger people tend to remember specific details in their

If people make a list of tasks to do in a week, one will most likely do the ones they find most relevant first and then the least important. The same thing happens with the memory; people have a tendency to remember things based on their importance. Previous research has been done comparing young adults and older adults’ memory based on the intention-superiority effect and as the results suggested young adults scored higher in remembering the things they were going to do compared with the things they already did. This same study was replicated with undergraduate students. In the present study, the aim was to investigate if this effect occurs in older adults compare to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. They hypothesized that the number of tasks the participants would remember

I remember a few things about my development from ages 7-11, but I actually called my parents to gain a little bit more information. As far as my height and weight go, I believe I was average for my age groups. I know compared to my classmates I was a little bit shorter, but even to this day my high school classmates are all fairly tall. When I look back at pictures at that age I would say my facial features and body type have remained fairly consistent since that time. I was very athletic and adventurous for my age. I loved every type sport and was always out and active. With this amount of activity, my motor development improved greatly. A couple of my favorite things to do were ride bike, baseball, and basketball, all of which use gross motor skills. My fine motor skills were also constantly improving, and they became second nature at that point. When it came to my health, I would say that I was as healthy as a child could be at that age.

Cognitive aging is commonly labeled strictly as memory and only found in “some people”. However, this is not true. The knowledge of cognitive aging has grown immensely, but there is still much to be learned. The surface has only been scratched with many more questions to be answered. Cognitive aging is worthy of study and effects everyone, but there is also much more is still to be learned.

When contrasted against the young adult population, older adults retain their powers of concentration, but have less competent inhibitory processes (Hasher and Zacks, 1988). A less efficient memory, then, may be a result of working memory overly invested in extraneous areas. Similarly, one could argue in defense of the inhibition deficit hypothesis, that the elderly experience dysfunctional levels of inhibition on a general array of mental undertakings, among them observation (Houx, Jolles, & Vrieling, 1993).

     Information processing is a perspective (approach) to the study of cognition and cognitive development in which the mind is likened to a computer. However, rather than focusing on mere input and output, psychologists who adhere to this approach place specific emphasis on the processes of cognitive development. Cognitive perspectives examine development in terms of mental processing. The two major views within this subject are cognitive developmental theory and information processing theory.

The results also revealed that the older participants and younger participants performed equally as well on the recall task. Fascinatingly, this result suggests that age has little relevance on the immediate recall of words. The implication of this finding is unexpected

Ageing is traditionally viewed with negative impressions, and it is typical of society to stereotype older people. Even in the field of science, ageing is considered a negative development. A common view of ageing among academics, psychologists and medical physicians about ageing, is that it is associated with loss or deteriorating cognitive ability. This in itself is discriminating and a form of social stigma and stereotyping against older people (Lupien and Wan, 2004). For some cultures, ageing is a blessing and the older people are revered and honoured, for others, ageing is more or less a curse, a burden and a reason for stereotyping, stigma and discrimination.

The first study that I came across was a study from the Association for Psychological Science “Brief memory test ‘ages’ older adults in October 15 2013. The researchers recruited 22 older adults with the years of 65 to 85 asking how old they felt before and after a memory test. Given the stereotypes of associating aging with memory, the hypothesis was that the memory test would emphasis their age and furthermore making them feel old. Results show that their subjective age was considerably younger than their average chronological age, but however was increased by 5 years then their initial report. Nevertheless, the participants didn’t show any actual memory problem, but rather how they felt about themselves. The perception or the schema of their ability to affect how they felt.