Cognitive Changes in Old Age

8/10/2019 Cognitive Changes in Old Age

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Cognitive Changes inOld AgeBy: YO GABBA GABBA


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Just as age-related changes in brain structure andfunction are not uniform across the whole brain or

across individuals, age-related changes in cognitionare not uniform across all cognitive domains oracross all older individuals. The basic cognitivefunctions most affected by age are attention andmemory. Neither of these are unitary functions,

however, and evidence suggests that some aspectsof attention and memory hold up well with agewhile others show significant declines. Perception(although considered by many to be a precognitivefunction) also shows significant age-related declinesattributable mainly to declining sensory capacities.Deficits at these early processing stages could affectcognitive functions later in the processing stream.


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Higher-level cognitive functions such as

language processing and decision-making mayalso be affected by age. These tasks naturallyrely on more basic cognitive functions and willgenerally show deficits to the extent that those

fundamental processes are impaired.Moreover, complex cognitive tasks may alsodepend on a set of executive functions, whichmanage and coordinate the various

components of the tasks. Considerableevidence points to impairment of executivefunction as a key contributor to age-relateddeclines in a range of cognitive tasks.


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Attention

Attention is a basic but complex cognitive process

that has multiple sub-processes specialized for

different aspects of attentional processing. Some

form of attention is involved in virtually all othercognitive domains, except when task performance

has become habitual or automatic. Declines in

attention can therefore have broad-reaching

effects on ones ability to function adequately andefficiently in everyday life.


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Selective Attention

Selective attention refers to the ability to attend to

some stimuli while disregarding others that are

irrelevant to the task at hand. To perform well in

these kinds of tasks, people have to select therelevant stimulus or dimensions for processing

and ignore the irrelevant ones. Although findings

are not entirely consistent across studies and may

differ across tasks, in general older adults appearto be slower than younger adults in responding to

the targets, but are not differentially affected by

distraction.


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Divided Attention

Divided attention has usually been associated with

significant age-related declines in performance,

particularly when tasks are complex. Divided

attention tasks require the processing of two ormore sources of information or the performance

of two or more tasks at the same time. Results

suggest that older adults are more affected by the

division of attention than young adults,particularly when the attentional demands of the

two tasks are high.


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Divided Attention, contd

In addition, older adults seem less able to allocate

resources appropriately when instructions are

given to vary task priority. There is evidence that

age deficits in divided attention and attentionswitching can be reduced by practice or extended

training and by aerobic exercise.


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Sustained Attention

Sustained attention refers to the ability to

maintain concentration on a task over an

extended period of time. Typically, vigilance tasks

are used to measure sustained attention, in whichpeople must monitor the environment for a

relatively infrequent signal, such as a blip on a

radar screen. In general, older adults are not

impaired on vigilance tasks.


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Attention

Older adults show significant impairments on attentional

tasks that require dividing or switching of attention among

multiple inputs or tasks. They show relative preservation of

performance on tasks that require selection of relevant

stimuli; and although they are slower than young adults,they are not differentially impaired by distraction. They

also are able to maintain concentration for an extended

period of time. The tasks on which older adults show

impairments tend to be those that require flexible controlof attention, a cognitive function associated with the

frontal lobes.


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Working Memory

Working memory is a multidimensional cognitive

construct that has been hypothesized as the

fundamental source of age-related deficits in a

variety of cognitive tasks, including long-termmemory, language, problem solving, and decision-

making. Older adults exhibit significant deficits in

tasks that involve active manipulation,

reorganization, or integration of the contents ofworking memory.


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Working Memory, contd

Many complex everyday tasks such as decision-making,

problem-solving, and the planning of goal-directed

behaviors require the integration and reorganization of

information from a variety of sources. It seems likely that

attention, speed of information processing, and the abilityto inhibit irrelevant information are all important functions

for effective performance of these higher-level cognitive

tasks.


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Long Term Memory

The cognitive domain that has probably received the most

attention in normal aging is memory. Many older adults

complain of increased memory lapses as they age, and a

major focus of research has been to try to distinguish

memory declines attributable to normal aging from thosethat are indicative of pathological aging, particularly

Alzheimers disease. Like attention, memory is not a

unitary construct; some kinds of memory remain relatively

intact with age while others show significant declines.Long-term memory, unlike short-term and working

memory, requires retrieval of information that is no longer

present or being maintained in an active state.


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Memory

Aging principally affects episodic memory, namely memory

for specific events or experiences that occurred in the past.

Although many older adults believe that their memories

for remote events are better than their memories for

recent events, it is likely that older memories have becomemore semantic or gistlike, retaining the general core

information but lacking details, particularly spatial and

temporal context. More problematic for older adults is

remembering context or source information: where orwhen something was heard or read, or even whether

something actually happened or was just thought about,

what has been called reality monitoring.


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Perception

Declining sensory and perceptual abilities have important

implications for the everyday lives of older adults. Hearing

loss can isolate older people, preventing them from

engaging in conversation and other social interactions.

Visual impairments can limit mobility and interact withattentional deficits to make driving a particularly

hazardous activity.


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Perception, contd

As older people develop strategies to compensate for

declining sensory abilities, the ways in which they perform

other cognitive tasks may also be altered and may be less

efficient. Retraining and practice on these tasks may help

the adjustment and improve performance.


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Arts, Crafts and PlayTherapy


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Arts and Crafts

As we age, cognitive and physical exercise are

imperative not only to our health, but to our

overall life expectancy. Creating things, like

pottery, or painting, engage the elderly bothcognitively and psychologically. Cognitively, they

are utilizing a part of their brain that they

probably wouldnt ordinarily.


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Arts and Crafts, contd

According to recent findings in a Journal of the

American Medical Association study, exercising

the brain is as important to keeping the brain alert

and strong as physical exercise is important tokeeping the body strong and able. Psychologically,

the benefits of creating things is fulfilling and gives

people a sense of worth and contribution; creating

gives people a more positive outlook on life, andas we age, having the a negative outlook can

cause mental and physical deterioration.


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Play Therapy

Although Play Therapy has been recognized as an

effective approach with children, few practitioners

may be aware of the research indicating that

adults can benefit from Play Therapy techniques.Research has demonstrated that Play Therapy

techniques can be Successfully incorporated into

therapy for adult clients, especially those of old

age.


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Play Therapy, contd

In using Play Therapy, the helping professional

assumes that clients of all ages remain child-like

within their internal processes and that everyone

can benefit from nonverbal self-expression. PlayTherapy interventions can allow adults to access

their inner selves and work through childhood

trauma using a range of materials. Materials are

specifically chosen to facilitate creative andexpressive play.


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Play Therapy, contd

Therapists can incorporate improvisation, role

plays, psychodrama, games, and projective

drawings and art to open up the hidden traumas

that are buried within clients developmentalstages. The use of play therapy strategies allows

for the use of humor, relaxation, and enrichment

into the process of uncovering areas of great pain

from a safer, more distanced approach.


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Play Therapy, contd

Instructions are purposefully vague, allowing

adults to choose their own modalities without the

pressure to verbalize painful memories and

experiences. Play Therapy can facilitate adults invalidating and interpreting their experiences

without the directiveness of therapeutic goals

(Schaefer, 2003). Practitioners who have used Play

Therapy with adults have found that Play Therapycan lead to stress release, self-affirmation, insight,

and improved communication (Ward-Wimmer and

Ford, 2001).


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Cognitive Changes in Old Age

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