Effects of Aging on Cognitive Development

Aging is a natural process that all human beings must experience at some point in their

lives. As people age their bodies also undergo many physical and psychological changes. Many

of these changes affect cognitive functioning and development of a person. Each person is

different therefore, aging differently, which means that the age-related changes in the structure of

the brain and how it function in cognitive domains are not the same across the brain as a whole

nor are they the same for every individual. In other words some changes a person maybe

experiencing due to aging may not be the same as another person. This material will discuss the

effect aging has on cognitive development.

Cognitive Development

Everyone goes through stages of cognitive development from the time we are born to

adulthood. Psychologist and developmental biologist Jean Piaget theorized four stages of

cognitive development in which were named after himself (Miller, 2011). Piaget’s four stages of

cognitive development are Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal

Operational.

The Sensorimotor stage is from birth to 2 years old. “Infants understand the world in

terms of their overt, physical actions on the world. Simple reflexes gradually become more

complex, intentional, and organized. Each action-based concept is a pattern of perceptual-motor

interactions, for example, ‘things you can suck on.’ Piaget refers to a ‘logic of action’” (Miller,

2011).

The Preoperational stage is from ages 2 to 7 years old. “Children use symbols (mental

images, words, gestures) to represent objects and events. That is, they reconstruct the

sensorimotor concepts of objects, relations, causality, space, and time in a new medium (mental
representation) and a more highly organized structure. Despite the limitations of egocentrism,

rigid thought, and limited role-taking and communication abilities, these symbols become

increasingly organized and logical, so that children can think about causes” (Miller, 2011).

Concrete operational stage is from the ages 7-11. According to Miller (2011), “Logical

structures permit children to perform various mental operations, which are internalized actions

that can be reversed. Thinking now is more flexible and abstract. Actions are still the main

source of knowledge, but the actions now are mental. Logic dominates over perceptions, such

that children understand that quantities stay the same even though they change their appearance.”

The final stage is the Formal operational stage, which we pass through from 11-

adulthood. “Mental operations now can be applied not only to concrete objects but also to purely

verbal or logical statements, to the possible as well as the real, to the future as well as the

present. Children take the results of concrete operations and generate hypotheses (propositions,

statements) about their logical relations. Thus, they have operations on operations; thought has

become truly logical, abstract, and hypothetical. The essence of formal operational thought is the

scientific method. Children formulate a hypothesis and test it. They can imagine all possible

outcomes and generate all possible combinations to test” (Miller, 2001).

Piaget stated that we all pass through each one of these stages in the same sequence,

although he acknowledged that some children would go through the stages at different ages than

others and that some children would show mannerisms of more than one stage at time (Miller,

2011).

Effects of Aging on Cognitive Development

As technology evolves, the average age of the population increases as well as the interest

in the ability to understand cognitive and neural changes, which accompany aging (Kensinger &
Corkin, 2009). While it is clear that substantial cognitive decline cannot be avoided with

advancing age. This has motivated researchers to examine what isolates older high-performing

adults from older lower-performing adults (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009). It also allows them to

research the difference between successful aging from those who suffer from age-related

diseases (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009).

Not all people’s cognitive domains and processes are affected the same with age. Most

common and noticeable cognitive declines in older people are, problems paying attention and

problems with memory (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009). Cognitive changes that occur with aging

may be linked to changes in sensation, such as vision and hearing (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009).

Most people in their 80th year of life have a reduced ability to discriminate colors and significant

hearing loss. For example, if asked to remember certain words dictated in a noisy environment,

younger adults perform better than older adults (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009). These deficits can

also be a result of slower performance due to slower auditory processing and could probably

explain why older adults have poorer memory. It is also possible that some older adults could

have a correlation, which derives from common influence of sensory and cognitive changes

(Kensinger & Corkin, 2009).

Older adults are also better able to regulate their emotions. Research has shown that older

adults have lower rates of depression and are able to bounce back quickly from negative moods.

This has to do because older adults tend to focus on positive events in their environment and

choose activities based on their emotional fulfillment (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009). While some

people have healthy cognitive development, others are less fortunate. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD),

is the most common cause in negative cognitive development that affects older people and two-

thirds of all AD cases lead to dementia (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009). Alzheimer’s can only be
confirmed through autopsy, so there is a clinical profile for the disease, which requires symptoms

of memory impairment plus a decline in other areas of cognition such as, language, motor

function, attention, executive function, personality, or object recognition. Usually those deficits

have a gradual onset and have to progress continually. Once the criteria is met, a trained clinician

will then give a diagnosis of “probable” Alzheimer’s disease (Kensinger & Corkin, 2009).

Researchers are starting to recognize the need of taking a more individualistic approach

to understanding cognitive changes in older adults. They are also beginning to explore

differences between high-performing and low-performing older adults. Piaget theorized that we

all pass through many stages of cognition from birth to adulthood and as we age our cognitive

development continues to change.