Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences

cite as: J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1, 1–6
doi:10.1093/geronb/gbw108

Special Issue: Cognitive Aging: Special Article

50 Years of Cognitive Aging Theory

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Nicole D. Anderson1,2,3 and Fergus I. M. Craik1,3
Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 2Department of Psychiatry and 3Department of Psychology,
1

University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Correspondence should be addressed to Nicole D. Anderson, PhD, CPsych, Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, 3560 Bathurst Street, Toronto,
ON M6A 2E1, Canada. E-mail: nanderson@research.baycrest.org

Received July 21, 2016; Accepted August 4, 2016

Decision Editor: Bob G. Knight, PhD

Abstract
Objectives:  The objectives of this Introduction to the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences special issue on “50
Years of Cognitive Aging Theory” are to provide a brief overview of cognitive aging research prior to 1965 and to highlight
significant developments in cognitive aging theory over the last 50 years.
Method:  Historical and recent theories of cognitive aging were reviewed, with a particular focus on those not directly
covered by the articles included in this special issue.
Results:  Prior to 1965, cognitive aging research was predominantly descriptive, identifying what aspects of intellectual
functioning are affected in older compared with younger adults. Since the mid-1960s, there has been an increasing inter-
est in how and why specific components of cognitive domains are differentially affected in aging and a growing focus on
cognitive aging neuroscience.
Discussion:  Significant advances have taken place in our theoretical understanding of how and why certain components of
cognitive functioning are or are not affected by aging. We also know much more now than we did 50 years ago about the
underlying neural mechanisms of these changes. The next 50 years undoubtedly will bring new theories, as well as new tools
(e.g., neuroimaging advances, neuromodulation, and technology), that will further our understanding of cognitive aging.
Keywords:  Attention—Cognition—Cognitive neuroscience—Executive function—Language—Memory—Neuropsychology—Social
cognition—Technology—Theory

This special edition commemorates the roughly 50  years
of theoretical work on cognitive aging. As an Introduction
to this issue, we first briefly review cognitive aging efforts
prior to the mid-1960s, then describe the mid-1960s as a
pivotal point for cognitive aging theory, and finally com-
ment on how the field has evolved since then.
Cognitive Aging Research Prior to the
Mid-1960s
Observations of cognitive aging date back millennia. Take,
for instance, the sixth century BC poet Solon who, in writ-
ing about life’s hebdomads, or periods of 7 years, “… in the
ninth, though he’s still capable, his tongue and expertise
have lost some of their force” (Baars, 2012). Empirical
proof of cognitive aging appeared in the 1930s, when Miles
evaluated the perceptual, motor, and cognitive abilities of
1600 people aged 6 to 95 years old, and reported declines
after age 30 in these skills, including learning ability (e.g.,
Miles, 1933). Age-related slowing emerged as a salient fea-
ture in the 1930s; the fact that most intelligence tests were
speeded led Lorge (1940) to correct intelligence test data
for speed of processing, finding that intelligence did not,
in fact, decline with age. Lorge’s discovery of the relation-
ship between speed and intellectual capacity reminds us of
Salthouse’s later and more encompassing theory that age-
related changes in speed underlie changes in a number of
cognitive domains (e.g., Salthouse, 1996).

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2 Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
This early literature was predominantly descriptive,
comparing task performance across age groups in cross-
sectional designs, and typically used the same intelligence
tests that were used in the study of child development. In
1955, Wechsler identified the maintenance (“hold”) and
decline (“no hold”) of what was later termed crystal-
lized and fluid intelligence, respectively (Cattell, 1963).
Uncovered too was a decline in what we now call working
memory, thanks to the inclusion of backward digit span in
intelligence testing (Bromley, 1958).
Emergence of Cognitive Aging Theory: The
Mid-1960s
1965 marked the beginning of a sea change in cognitive
aging theory. This was the year that Welford and Birren
(1965) published Behavior aging and the nervous system,
a collection of chapters on slowing, attention, memory and
their relationship with biological and health factors that
together provide a strong foundation for cognitive aging
theory. Patrick Rabbitt (1965) reported a study in which
younger and older adults sort cards as quickly as possible
into piles. Sorting was done once into two piles and once
into eight piles, defined by the number of relevant (target)
stimuli in that condition. Moreover, each card contained
0, 1, 4, or 8 irrelevant stimuli. Older adults’ sorting times
were more vulnerable to the increasing amount of irrel-
evant information, particularly when fewer stimuli were
relevant. Rabbitt concluded that older adults have greater
difficulty ignoring irrelevant information compared with
their younger counterparts and suggested based on some
of his previous work that this may be due to a reduced
efficiency of perceptual grouping. Although the way in
which we carry out and describe research has certainly
changed since then (e.g., in his paper, stimuli were stenciled
onto cards that participants manually sorted, participants
were referred to as Ss in the manuscript), the ability of
older adults to ignore irrelevant information and both the
hindrances, as well as the surprising advantages of them
doing so is still a topic of much interest today (e.g., Biss,
Ngo, Hasher, Campbell, & Rowe, 2013; Weeks & Hasher,
2014).
1965 also brought us Schonfield’s letter to the journal
Nature. Until that time, cognitive aging researchers had
focused on the acquisition and short-term storage of new
information and reported equivocal findings. Schonfield
showed for the first time age-related deficits in retrieval
from long-term memory—free recall performance
decreased across age decades (20s to 60s+), but recognition
did not. These early ideas were later fleshed out in Craik’s
notions of the depletion of attentional resources with age
and the effects of environmental support, in which a task
environment supporting elaborative encoding or guiding
retrieval can compensate for older adults’ reduced atten-
tional resources that render encoding and retrieval less
effective (Craik, 1986).
In 1966, Bromley made the very prescient observation:
“Intellectual processes appear to become more differenti-
ated as we grow up. There is some evidence – too little to
support firm conclusions – that during maturity and old
age the process of intellectual differentiation reverses…”
(p.  205). One early finding perhaps contributing to this
observation was Balinsky’s (1941) report of a U-shaped
function of correlations between performance on various
tests from the Wechsler–Bellevue Scale, where inter-test
correlations were high in 9- and 12-year-old children, but
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then decreased across age groups until the mid-40s, after
which correlations increased again in the 50- to 59-year-old
age group (the oldest age group included). Bromley’s reflec-
tion presages the notion of dedifferentiation—the height-
ened correlation among cognitive, perceptual, and neural
processes—that was revived in cognitive aging research
in the 1980s (e.g., Baltes, Cornelius, Spiro, Nesselroade,
& Willis, 1980) and still remains a topic of interest today,
particularly in relation to the dynamic activity of the brain
(e.g., Ferreira et al., 2015).
Cognitive Aging Theory: Evolution Since the
Mid-1960s
Two notable trends in cognitive aging research over the
past 50  years reflect changes in the parent discipline of
cognitive psychology; the first is an increasing differentia-
tion among components of cognitive performance (accom-
panied by a growing realization that life-span changes in
these components peak at different ages) and the second
is a shift in emphasis to the cognitive neuroscience of age-
related changes—attributing cognitive changes to age-
related changes in brain structure and function (e.g., Raz,
2000). With regard to changes with age in general intel-
ligence, some influential researchers argued that there is lit-
tle or no decline (Baltes & Schaie, 1976) and that popular
conceptions of age-related losses are a “myth.” This opti-
mistic position was hotly contested, however, withone line
of argument being that fluid intelligence declines markedly
with age after peaking in the 20s or 30s, whereas crystal-
lized intelligence is maintained until the 60s or later or even
improves across the life span (Cattell, 1971; Horn, 1970;
Horn & Donaldson, 1976). The analysis in terms of com-
ponent abilities was taken further by Salthouse (1982) who
showed that measures of vocabulary and general informa-
tion hold up well into the 70s at least, whereas speeded
measures such as digit-symbol substitution decline precip-
itously from the 20s or early 30s. This account in terms
of differential age-related decline, presumably linked to
differences in vulnerability to aging of the relevant brain
regions, is still the current view. For example, Park and
colleagues (2002) presented compelling data showing that
whereas working memory and speed of processing decline
steadily for the 20s to the 80s, forward digit span shows
only a moderate decline, and verbal knowledge actually
increases from the 20s to the 70s. Later work has shown
Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
this useful categorization of crystallized and fluid abilities
to be too broad, however. A recent online study of almost
50,000 participants showed that the age of peak perfor-
mance on a large sample of intelligence tests varied from
the late teens to the 50s (Hartshorne & Germine, 2015).
In line with previous formulations, the tests that peaked
late (e.g., vocabulary and comprehension) tended to reflect
crystallized intelligence, whereas those that peaked early
(e.g., digit-symbol coding, letter-number sequencing) reflect
aspects of fluid intelligence, but there is no clear categorical
shift from one type to another type of test.
Paul Baltes (who sadly died in 2006) was a major con-
tributor to the field of cognitive aging. He took a very
positive, optimistic view of aging, acknowledging that
cognitive abilities do decline, but that older adults possess
some degree of “latent reserve” that can be activated with
the investment of additional time and energy. Together
with Margret Baltes he argued that older individuals cope
with a decrease in environmental adaptability by strategi-
cally choosing classes of behavior that are most adequate
for their personal lifestyle. They termed this the process
of “selective optimization” (Baltes & Baltes, 1990). Paul
Baltes also directed a large-scale study of memory train-
ing in Berlin, demonstrating that by implementing strate-
gies older adults could improve their memory dramatically
for specific materials (Kliegl, Smith, & Baltes, 1989). In
line with other results, however, such gains tended to be
restricted to the practiced situation and not show “far trans-
fer” to other situations (Baltes & Willis, 1982). One other
interesting result from the Baltes group was the discovery
of a strong link between sensory functioning (visual and
auditory acuity) and various measures of intellectual ability
(Baltes & Lindenberger, 1997). Further, these relations were
much stronger in an older group (70–103 years) than in a
group of younger adults (25–69  years). The authors con-
sidered various possible accounts of these findings, some-
what favoring a “common cause” hypothesis—the notion
that age-related decrements in brain structure and function
are associated with correlated losses in a variety of sensory
and cognitive functions. It seems possible that the increased
linkage with age between sensory and cognitive functions
could be another example of the general age-related loss of
differentiation among abilities noted earlier.
Age-related changes in attention and memory have been
major topics in the field of cognitive aging during the last
50 years. Continuing on the trend mentioned earlier in this
Introduction, a further sign of increasing differentiation of
cognitive abilities is the distinction among various types
of memory (e.g., episodic, semantic, implicit, explicit, and
prospective) and aspects of attention (e.g., selective atten-
tion, sustained attention, inhibition, and set switching).
Recent evidence shows that these varied aspects of atten-
tion and memory also appear to age differentially. Research
on memory is well covered by Park and Festini (2016),
so we will describe some highlights of the “attention and
aging” literature in the present introductory article. Early
3
theoretical statements concerning the nature of human
attention were put forward by Broadbent (1958), Treisman
(1964), and Kahneman (1973), with the first two focusing
on selection and the last on arousal and effort. As described
earlier, Rabbitt (1965) demonstrated that older adults were
less able to ignore irrelevant information when selecting
targets, thereby implicating both selection and inhibition
as aspects of attention and choice. Other aspects include
sustained attention, divided attention, set switching, execu-
tive control, and (probably) working memory. One clear
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trend over the last half century has been the study of age-
related changes in these types or components of atten-
tion, rather than simply “attention” as such. This trend, in
both the aging literature and the literature based on young
adults, has continued despite clear evidence that these vari-
ous types of attention are often highly interrelated. Because
much of the work on attention involves frontally based
cognitive control mechanisms, it might be expected that all
aspects of attention should decline with age. This follows
from work showing that the frontal lobes are areas of the
brain known to be particularly vulnerable to the effects
of aging (Raz, 2000; West, 1996). Teasing out age-related
effects has been surprisingly complex, however, as shown
by the following brief accounts.
Following the work of Rabbitt (1965), further research
has generally confirmed an age-related decrement in selec-
tive attention (e.g., Plude & Hoyer, 1985) with later work
by Plude and colleagues suggesting that the problem lies
specifically in the feature-integration phase of perception
(Plude & Doussard-Roosevelt, 1989). Such difficulties in
selection are compounded by age-related inefficiencies
in inhibition (Hasher & Zacks, 1988; although see also
Kramer, Humphrey, Larish, Logan, & Strayer, 1994). In an
influential article, Hasher and Zacks (1988) proposed that
older adults are less able to inhibit unwanted or irrelevant
material, which then “occupies space” in working memory,
thereby reducing temporary storage and further processing
abilities. Further work has suggested that inhibition is not
a unitary construct, however, and that this approach may
help to understand when age-related decrements are and
are not found (Kramer & Madden, 2008).
The ability to manipulate top-down control of selection,
for example, selecting sometimes based on color and some-
times on shape, is referred to as task switching or set switch-
ing, and this literature shows some agreement with respect
to age differences. Paradigms typically contain some blocks
of trials in which the selection criterion is stable (e.g., select
by color only) and some blocks in which participants must
switch unpredictably from color to shape from trial to trial.
The longer latencies associated with mixed blocks versus
pure blocks are referred to as general task-switching costs;
these costs increase with age. The longer latencies associ-
ated with switch versus nonswitch trials within a block are
called specific task-switching costs, and there is good agree-
ment that general costs increase throughout adulthood
whereas specific costs remain relatively stable (Kray &
4 Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
Lindenberger, 2000; Reimers & Maylor, 2005; Verhaeghen
& Cerella, 2002). The Reimers and Maylor study was
conducted online on more than 5,000 participants aged
between 10 and 66  years; they found that general costs
were lowest for participants in their teens and increased
steadily from the age of 18 to 66 years.
Sustained attention over several minutes is another
aspect of attention that remains stable with age—at least
until the mid-40s. Berardi, Parasuraman, and Haxby
(2001) and also Carriere, Cheyne, Solman, and Smilek
(2010) reported minimal adult age differences in aspects of
sustained attention. However, in another large online study,
Fortenbaugh and colleagues (2015) reported results from
more than 10,000 participants and found that performance
peaked in the early 40s and then declined. As always, of
course, the precise pattern may depend on the exact task
chosen; Fortenbaugh and colleagues used a city versus
mountain scene discrimination task, whereas Berardi and
colleagues (2001) used a digit discrimination task and
Carriere and colleagues (2010) used the sustained attention
to response task.
With regard to divided attention, Craik (1977) made
the bold assertion that “One of the clearest results in the
experimental psychology of aging is the finding that older
subjects are more penalized when they must divide their
attention, either between two input sources, input and
holding, or holding and responding.” This claim was chal-
lenged, however, in a study by Salthouse and Somberg
(1982) who controlled for age differences in single-task
performance and found no significant age difference in
divided attention ability. A later study from Salthouse’s lab
(Salthouse, Rogan & Prill, 1984) did find an age-related
decrement in divided attention, however; the authors sug-
gest that the discrepancy between the results may reflect the
fact that task complexity was greater in the second study.
Verhaeghen and Cerella (2002) reviewed the results of a
series of meta-analyses and concluded that age deficits in
dual-task performance are in fact generally found.
Finally, the topic of age-related differences in “executive
processes” or “cognitive control” has received progressively
more attention in the course of the last 50 years. An impor-
tant paper by Hasher and Zacks (1979) drew the distinc-
tion between automatic and effortful cognitive operations,
illustrating their claim that effortful processing requires
considerable amounts of processing capacity and that age
decrements are typically found on such tasks, in contrast
to the absence of such decrements on automatic tasks. The
notion that conscious, effortful processing requires cogni-
tive control which in turn becomes less efficient with age
is now generally accepted. Two brief examples are first the
work from Larry Jacoby’s lab (e.g., Jennings & Jacoby,
1993); in this study, the authors found that older adults
were impaired on consciously controlled memory pro-
cessing. The second example is the suggestion from Todd
Braver and colleagues that one major aspect of cognitive
control consists of maintaining a task-related context in
working memory and that older adults are less adept at this
form of processing (Braver et al., 2001). Braver’s approach
emphasizes the point that various aspects of attention—
in this case working memory and executive control—are
closely interwoven. More generally, when attempting to
understand age-related problems of attention, it is increas-
ingly clear that while attention is not a unitary construct,
its components (inhibition, executive control, working
memory etc.) are also not unitary constructs—possibly
right down to the level of specific tasks. This understanding
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calls for a new framework for the interpretation of “atten-
tion” and its changes with age.
The Future
We can forecast a few trends in the future of cognitive
aging research. We anticipate a greater focus on cognitive
aging throughout the adult life span, not from cross-sec-
tional studies but rather from the many large longitudi-
nal studies that are currently ongoing. Some of this work
might be interventional—our understanding of midlife pre-
dictors of later life cognitive ability is growing, but what
if we intervene at midlife in some of those harbingers of
cognitive decline? More sophisticated neuroimaging tech-
niques with better spatial-temporal resolution, and perhaps
ways to track neurotransmitter activity or gene expression
in real time, may be developed that will afford a better
understanding of the neural contributors to cognitive aging
and provide another avenue to intervene. Technological
advances will not only support cognitive functioning but
could also help us move our labs into the real world and
track cognitive functioning as it is influenced by people’s
environments. Whatever the future may be, it will stand on
the solid foundational theoretical understanding of cogni-
tive aging that has developed over the last 50 years.
The Special Issue
Several influential cognitive aging theorists have contrib-
uted to this special edition. Salthouse highlights how an
individual difference approach has advanced our under-
standing of cognitive aging. Three empirical papers applied
individual difference approaches. Thorvaldsson, Karlsson,
Skoog, Skoog, and Johansson demonstrate marked cohort
effects in both baseline cognitive functioning and cognitive
decline. Gow, Pattie, and Deary identify associations of
midlife leisure and late life physical activity with cognitive
ability level and cognitive decline, respectively. A  paper
from the late Humphreys and colleagues demonstrates the
utility of technology to facilitate cognitive assessment in
low income, low literacy settings, where the effects of age
and education on various cognitive domains are remark-
ably similar to what the earlier studies demonstrated.
Harkening back to the dawn of theoretical cognitive
aging, Rabbitt reflects on the evolution of research on age-
related changes in speed of visual recognition. Kensinger
Journals of Gerontology: PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2017, Vol. 72, No. 1
and Gutchess place cognitive aging in a social context with
their description of the progression of research on social
and affective cognitive aging, whereas Fischer, O’Rourke,
and Loken Thornton report age-invariant and age-varying
influences of various cognitive domains, sex, and pulse
pressure on cognitive and affective theory of mind. Park
and Festini guide us through the evolution of theories of
memory and aging. Two empirical papers demonstrate the
influence of memory in other cognitive domains. Wallin,
Gajewski, Teplitz, Mihelic Jaidzeka, and Philbeck dem-
onstrate that memory for a preview of a scene facilitates
judgments of distance to a spatial target after a later brief
glimpse, more so for older than younger adults. Finally,
Shafto, James, Abrams, Tyler, and Cam-CAN provide
convincing evidence that, contrary to previous assertions,
greater acquisition of lifelong knowledge (crystallized
intelligence) does not lead to more frequent tip-of-the-
tongue experiences. This collection of review and empiri-
cal papers provides a broad perspective on both historical
and contemporary cognitive aging theory.
Funding
This work was supported by a grant awarded to NDA by the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP 123484) and by a
grant awarded to FIMC by the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada (A8261).
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