Running head: AGING EFFECTS ON COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS

Aging Effects on Cognitive Functions

Zakia Alhashem

Colorado State University

AGING EFFECTS ON COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS Abstract

This lit review investigated the validity of the myth about the inevitable effect of aging cognitive functions. This literature review has been conducted as a qualitative study through analyzing and synthesizing the material related to this subject. This review affected adults, especially older adults, educational faculty, and the perspective of aging and memory in society. The participants in the study were old adults, younger adults, researchers and psychologists. This review would be very useful in giving a clear understanding of the relation between aging and the change in cognitive functions and the effect of other factors on these functions. A lot of studies indicated that cognitive function in older adults could be kept as strong as they are in younger adults under certain circumstances. Such studies might overcome the myth of absolute negative change in the strength of cognitive functions in older adults. Keywords: aging, adults, cognition, functions, memory, and change.

Aging Effects on Cognitive Functions Aging Effects on Cognition Functions

In different ages and cultures, the relation between aging and memory, which is considered on of the most important cognitive functions, was of significant importance. In ancient Egyptian society aging was considered a blissing from the gods and many of the Egyptian leaders kept a good memory in late age. For the Greeks, Mnemosyne is one of the strongest goddess because of her ability to remember, and the word memory was taken from her name. While Roman society believed that aging is inevitable and memory could be kept through keeping minds active. Aristotle said that knowledge that did not leave impression on mind is more likely to be forgotten. Then came a long period that gave aging and its nature more attention than aging effects on cognitive functions, but the alchemist Roger Bacon stated that the decline in mental functions caused by aging is not an absolute fact. Then came the European philosophy indicating that the problem in aging and memory is not about storing but about reaching the information. Later in 1907, Alois Alzheimer discovered Alzheimer disease. After that, the psychological and physiological aspects of aging went under investigations, and it was found that older people performed slowly in complex tasks but with high quality of performance. (Surprenant, Bireta, & Farley, 2007). Learning was viewed to be difficult for old adults (Hiemstra, 1975). This long history of different views about aging effects on cognitive functions left the myth of the inevitable effect of aging on cognition. The importance of this study lies in reporting the findings of recent researches and experiments. There are some facts that are proved to be true and others to be false, in addition to different factors that affect cognitive functions. This study contains

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the findings of scientific researches and experiments done on old and young adults concerning the effect of age and the effect of other factors in cognitive functions. Method This study was conducted as a qualitative study. The sources used in this study were mainly from an online journal database, EBSCO, and from Google Scholar. This study used different laboratory experiments findings and psychological analysis. This study is of a significant importance to different types of audience. It is important to an adult educational faculty in viewing adults, especially older adults as learners, and in considering the abilities and challenges of this type of learners. On the other hand, it is important for adults in forming their perspective about their older age, it helps them how to face and protect themselves from these cognitive changes, and society will view aging and old adults differently.

Results This study reached two different results that stated a third one. The first result: this result mostly depends on biological changes in older adults. These changes are related to human brain underlying mechanism. Many researches found that damage to the frontal lobes has a negative effect on memory functions, and the age impacts on memory performance increases in complex tasks. Other researches find a reduce in the left prefrontal cortical region activity with aging during the encoding in different task of memory such as, recognition of unfamiliar faces, paired associated learning, and word recall. In neuroimaging researches, it has been found that aging is associated with reduction in volume and activation levels of

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structures and circuits, and these reductions are related to the performance of memory. Final result of these researches is that aging affects neuronal loss in some area of the brain, which supports memory functions. In addition, the data collected from different studies announces the decline in memory is and cognitive functions are accompanied with decline in sensory and motor functions (Hess, 2005). According to Glisky (2007), the age-related changes in cognitive function do not necessary impact all of these functions. Their effect is mostly on memory and attention. These changes are viewed in normal aging. Attention: there are two different types of attention, the first one is Selective attention: which refers to the ability to respond to certain stimuli and discarding the ones, which are not irrelevant to the task. Older adults response slower than younger ones. This defect is referred to the slow in information processing in older adults. Divided Attention and Attention Switching: it is affected by the related-age decline in cognitive functions, and older adults do not perform well tasks that require this attention especially in complex tasks. Sustained attention: the ability to concentrate for a long time on one task. Older people did not show any difficulty in this kind of attention. Older people show impairments in the tasks that need flexible attention, which is related to the frontal lobs of the brain. Working Memory: is a multidimensional cognitive construct that has been hypothesized, as the fundamental source of age-related deficits in a variety of cognitive task.it is known that old people are impaired in working memory. Older

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adults show great deficiency in performance of tasks related to working memory such as decision-making and problem solving. Long term memory: this kind of memory concerns about information that are not active, or not presented, or maintained in short term memory. There are several kinds of this memory. Episodic Memory: which is about the ability to remember an experienced event, which took place in a certain time and place. Older people have a deficiency in this type of memory because of the involvement of weak encoding and storage. Semantic memory: refers to general knowledge and older adults are not impaired in this kind of memory. Autobiographical Memory: is about ones personal memories and semantic memories. It is found that older people report events with fewer details than younger adults, but they report the details about the emotional events such as the death of Princess Diana as well as young adults (kimmel, 1990). Procedural memory: older adults show a normal acquisition of procedural skills, but they are slower than young people in applying these skills unless they are experts they perform almost as younger adults. However; Gilsky mentioned that other factors than aging might affect the cognitive function in older adults. An experiment of age differences in recall and recognition, it was found that older persons performed less well in recall task than younger persons, while on recognition task old persons performed almost as well as younger persons. In addition, old persons performed less well than younger one in the task of recall and cued recall. This difference in old persons performance in recall, cued recall, and

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recognition was explained to because recalling is a more complex task than recognition, and old people perform poorly in complex task in comparison to young people (Craik, Fergus, Toronto, McDowd, & Joan, 1987). Perception: according to Glisky (2007), researches found that most of older adults are likely to have a reduction in their perspective abilities, and this reduction is not always correctable. The second result: this indicated the importance and the affect of different factors on cognitive functions other than aging. According to kimmel (1990), There are many myths about aging effects on cognitive functions, especially memory. Some of the corrections for these myths are: 1-the decline in memory does not affect all old people. 2-the decline in memory is not inevitable; it could be overcome through exercises. 3- diseases may affect memory, such as Alzheimer and depression. 4-memory is affected by factors such as speed, motivation, and expertise. According to the Hess (2005), to understand the change in cognitive functions, we need to pay attention for other factors. Some of these factors are, these factors called the hot aspects: Goals: goals are very important factor that affects cognitive performance; it may influence the nature of the focus in cognitive operation. Goals must be taken in consideration when doing laboratory experience about memory, because they impact the way older adults and young process the memory task.

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Emotion: it has been found that alder adults perform well when the task is related to a positive matter, and do less well when it is related to negative matters. This is a castrate to what Kimmel (1990) mentioned, that older adults remember negative events more than the positive ones. Stereotyping: one of the most important factors of aging and cognitive functions if the impacts of stereotyping of older adults to be perform poorly in cognitive functions. It has been found that older adults who have control of their self-efficacy perform well in memory tasks. There was an experiment for older Americans and Chinese; both groups have participants who believed that aging is affecting their cognitive functions. It was found that older adults from both groups who had positive attitude toward their self-efficacy performed well in memory task than those who had negative impression about their cognitive functions. Health: there are researches that stated the relation between some health problem and cognitive functions reduction. For example, diabetes is associated with low cognitive functions. Lifestyle: researches found that life style is necessary for good performance in cognitive task (Hess, 2005). In addition, a socioeconomic statue impacts the cognitive performance. It was reported that older adults with higher socioeconomic statue performed better than those of lower socioeconomic statue. Gender also is considered as an effective factor on cognitive functions. Older males performed better than older female in memory tasks (Arbuckle, Concoordia, Gold, Anders, 1986).

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Education: has been found one of the most important factors that make older adults less likely to face a decline in cognitive functions (Albert, 1995). Education was showed as a strong protector against the development of Alzheimer disease (Hess, 2005). In addition, participants in memory task experience, with high education, had been found to have a higher rate of memory than those with a lower level of education (Arbuckle, Concoordia, Gold, Anders, 1986). Crawford also supported education as a protector from aging effect on memory (2004). Finally, there is the prospective memory in which the findings were the opposite. Prospective memory: Through an experiment about normal aging and prospective memory, it was found out that older adults can perform as well as younger adults if they are given a certain date and time to do a task. On the other hand, if the date and time were not determined, older adults show a deficiency in remembering to do the task (Einstein,Gilles, Furman, Greenvile, McDanil, & Mark,1990). Discussion The effect of aging on cognitive function is not an absolute one. It could be overcome. It is important to spread this knowledge because many people are affected by the common myth of the loss of memory in old age. They are affected by the idea that you cannot teach old dog new trick. Because they believe that they loss their cognitive functions as they age while practicing these functions through reading and education would protect them from this loss. They feel that they are in

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the box of stereotyping older adults and they cannot get out from it unless this myth is denied by science. When I started this lit review, I was quit sure that aging effect on cognitive functions is inevitable, but after doing this review I learned a lot about this topic.

Aging Effects on Cognitive Functions References

Albert, M. S., Jones, K., Savage, C. R., Berkman, L., Seeman, T., Blazer, D., & Rowe, J. W.

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(1995). Predictors of cognitive change in older persons: MacArthur studies of successful aging. Psychology and aging, 10(4), 578.

Arbuckle, T.Y.,Gold.D.,& Anderes,D.(1986).Cognitive function of older people in relation to social and personality variables.Psychology and Aging,1,55-62.
Craik, F. I., & McDowd, J. M. (1987). Age differences in recall and recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13(3), 474.

Crawford, D. L. (2004). The role of aging in adult learning: Implications for instructors in higher education. New Horizons for Learning.

Einstein, G. O., & McDaniel, M. A. (1990). Normal aging and prospective memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16(4), 717.

Hess, T. M. (2005). Memory and aging in context. Psychological bulletin,131(3), 383. Hiemstra, R. (1975). The Older Adult and Learning Glisky, E. L. (2007). Changes in cognitive function in human aging. Brain aging: models, methods, and mechanisms.

Kimmel, D. C. (1990). Adulthood and aging: An interdisciplinary, developmental view . New York: Wiley.

Surprenant, A. M., Bireta, T. J., & Farley, L. A. (2007). A brief history of memory and aging. The foundations of remembering: Essays in honor of Henry L. Roediger III, 107-123.

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