Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Videos

Aging and measures of processing speed.

T A Salthouse¹

¹School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0170, USA. salthouse@virginia.edu

Biological Psychology

|October 18, 2000

Summary

Processing speed in adulthood is influenced by general aging effects shared across many variables. Recent analytical methods reveal these shared influences account for substantial age-related variance in specific speed measures.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Constraints on theories of cognitive aging.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2013

Same author

Using selective interference to investigate spatial memory representations.

Memory & cognition·2013

Same author

Commentary on Watkins (1990): There are other solutions to the problem of proliferating memory theories.

The Behavior analyst·2012

Same author

Simultaneous processing of verbal and spatial information.

Memory & cognition·2011

Same author

Attempted decomposition of age-related influences on two tests of reasoning.

Psychology and aging·2001

Same author

Item analyses of age relations on reasoning tests.

Psychology and aging·2001

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Gerontology

Background:

Processing speed is a key cognitive function affected by adult aging.
Distinguishing general (shared) from specific (unique) age-related effects on speed is theoretically important but methodologically challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relative contributions of general and specific age-related effects on processing speed variables.
To apply novel analytical methods for partitioning age-related variance in cognitive measures.

Main Methods:

Utilized analytical procedures designed to estimate the relative contributions of shared and unique age-related influences.
Focused on partitioning age-related variance across multiple speed-related variables.

Main Results:

A significant proportion of age-related variance in individual speed variables is shared with other variables.
Evidence suggests that general age-related factors play a substantial role in processing speed decline.

Conclusions:

General age-related effects significantly influence processing speed, with large proportions of variance being shared across different measures.
These findings have implications for understanding psychophysiological and neurobiological changes associated with aging.

Related Experiment Videos