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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Dissociation between performance on abstract tests of executive function and problem solving in real-life type situations in normal aging | | Author(s) | S Crawford, S Channon |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 6, no 1, February 2002 |
| Pages | pp 12-21 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Mental clarity ; Performance ; Mental ageing ; Cognitive processes ; Evaluation. |
| Annotation | Executive skills assessed on abstract neuropsychological tests tend to decrease with normal ageing. The effects of ageing on tasks reliant on everyday knowledge and experience are less well understood. In the present study, groups of healthy older and younger people were compared on ability to solve real-life type problems covering a range of everyday interpersonal situations. Performance was also examined on a range of standardized neuropsychological tests involving executive skills. Older people were similar to younger people in most aspects of everyday problem-solving performance, although the older group appeared to use a different strategy to the younger group in generating potential problem solutions. Both groups performed normally for their age on executive tests. Comparisons based on raw scores rather than age-adjusted scores showed the younger group to perform better on the executive tests, but not on the problem-solving task. The possible contribution of knowledge and experience to problem solving on the current task is discussed. The greater life experience of the older group is likely to be the biggest contributory factor in maintaining problem-solving performance. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-020305202 A |
| Classmark | DF: 5H: D6: DA: 4C |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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