Centre for Policy on Ageing



Aging, cohorts and verbal ability
Author(s)	Duane F Alwin, Ryan J McCammon
Journal title	Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 56B, no 3, May 2001
Pages	pp S151-S161
Keywords	Cognitive processes ; Ageing process ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Cross sectional surveys ; United States of America.
Annotation	Age-related differences in cognitive abilities observed in cross-sectional samples of individuals varying in age may in part be spurious, due to the effects of cohort differences in schooling and related factors. This study examined age-related patterns in a measure of verbal ability using 14 repeated cross-sectional surveys from the US General Social Survey (GSS) over a 24-year period. The new GSS data show the expected age-related growth and decline in vocabulary knowledge, but these age differences are reduced when adjusting for cohort differences. There is evidence of small age-related patterns in vocabulary knowledge within cohorts, but the curvilinear contribution of ageing to variation in verbal scores account for less than one third of 1% of the variance in vocabulary knowledge, once cohort is controlled. Cohort differences in schooling contribute substantially to this effect. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-010711209 A
Classmark	DA: BG: F: 3KB: 7T
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.