9.7: Cognitive Development in Midlife (Ob10)

Plasticity of Intelligence

Prior research on cognition and aging has been focused on comparing young and old adults and assuming that midlife adults fall somewhere in between. But some abilities may decrease while others improve during midlife. The concept of plasticity means that intelligence can be shaped by experience. Intelligence is influenced by culture, social contexts, and personal choices as much as by heredity and age. In fact, there is new evidence that mental exercise or training can have lasting benefits (National Institutes of Health, 2007). We explore aspects of midlife intelligence below.

Formal Operational and Postformal Intelligence

Remember formal operational thought? Formal operational thought involves being able to think abstractly; however, this ability does not apply to all situations or subjects. Formal operational thought is influenced by experience and education. Some adults lead patterned, orderly, lives in which they are not challenged to think abstractly about their world. Many adults do not receive any formal education and are not taught to think abstractly about situations they have never experienced. Nor are they exposed to conceptual tools used to formally analyze hypothetical situations. Those who do think abstractly, in fact, may be able to do so more easily in some subjects than others. For example, English majors may be able to think abstractly about literature, but be unable to use abstract reasoning in physics or chemistry. Abstract reasoning in a particular field requires a knowledge base that we might not have in all areas. So our ability to think abstractly depends to a large extent on our experiences.

Postformal thought continues

As discussed previously, adults tend to think in more practical terms than do adolescents. Although they may be able to use abstract reasoning when they approach a situation and consider possibilities, they are more likely to think practically about what is likely to occur.

Increases and Decreases

Tacit knowledge (Hedlund, Antonakis, and Sternberg, 2001) increases with age. Tacit knowledge is pragmatic or practical and learned through experience rather than explicitly taught. It might be thought of as "know‐how" or "professional instinct." It is referred to as tacit because it cannot be codified or written down. It does not involve academic knowledge, rather it involves being able to use skills and to problem‐solve in practical ways. Tacit knowledge can be understood in the workplace and by blue collar workers such as carpenters, chefs, and hair dressers. These occupations and their associated cognitive skills are the subject of the book, The Mind at Work, by Mike Rose. Read an interview with Rose at http://www.susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=59

Verbal memory, spatial skills, inductive reasoning (generalizing from particular examples), and vocabulary increase with age as well (Willis and Shaie, 1999). You may have heard that wisdom comes with age. However, wisdom may be more of a function of personality than cognition. Those who exhibit wisdom in midlife, may have made wiser choices at younger ages as well.

The mechanics of cognition such as working memory and speed of processing gradually decline with age but can be easily compensated for through the use of higher order cognitive skills such as forming strategies to enhance memory or summarizing and comparing ideas rather than relying on rote memorization (Lachman, 2004). Further, the declines mentioned above may diminish as new generations, equipped with higher levels of education, begin to enter midlife.