S W Cornelius | PubMed Health

PubMed1987

Everyday problem solving in adulthood and old age.

We examined everyday problem solving in adulthood and compared it with traditional measures of cognitive abilities. In the first phase of the research, we describe the construction of an inventory to assess problem solving in situations that adults might encounter in everyday life and examine raters' judgments of effective responses to the problems. In the second phase, adults (N = 126) between the ages of 20 and 78 were administered the inventory and tests of verbal and abstract problem-solving abilities. Results indicated modest but significant positive correlations between performance on the inventory and traditional ability tests. The examination of age differences revealed that performance on the Everyday Problem-Solving Inventory and verbal ability test increased with age, whereas performance on a traditional problem-solving test declined after middle age. In addition, education was unrelated to everyday problem solving, highly related to verbal ability, and moderately related to traditional problem solving. Results are discussed in relation to pluralistic conceptions of intelligence and theories of adult intellectual development.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1984

Classic pattern of intellectual aging: test familiarity, difficulty, and performance.

Research has consistently identified a classic pattern of intellectual aging characterized by multidirectional age profiles in intellectual performance. Age-irrelevant abilities are relatively constant in adulthood, whereas age-sensitive abilities exhibit moderate to substantial decline with age. The purposes of the present study were to determine whether adults' ratings of test familiarity and difficulty differed for age-irrelevant versus age-sensitive tests and whether such ratings themselves were related to the age of judges. A sample (N = 100) of young, middle-aged, and elderly adults was administered three age-irrelevant and four age-sensitive ability tests and provided ratings of the familiarity, difficulty, effortfulness, and speed of each test. Results indicated that age-sensitive tests were rated as less familiar, more difficult, and more effortful than age-irrelevant tests by all age groups. In general, the differences between ratings of the two types of tests increased with increasing age. For both types of test, performance was associated positively with ratings of test familiarity and associated negatively with ratings of test difficulty, effortfulness, and speed. Several explanations for relations among age, test characteristics, and performance are discussed.

Adolescent↗