Experience-based attenuation of age-related differences in music cognition tasks.

Pianists of a wide experience and age range were tested on measures of musical memory and musical perceptual speed to better understand the effects of experience on age-cognition relations. Experience-related attenuation might be in the form of an Age x Experience interaction or in the form of a "confounding" of age and experience such that positive age-experience relations offset negative age-cognition relations. It was predicted that the former, considered evidence for disuse interpretations of aging, would be likely to emerge in tasks with strong experience effects and strong age-related declines among inexperienced individuals. However, in no case were the interactions of age and experience on the memory or perceptual speed variables significant. There was, however, evidence that high levels of experience in the older participants partially attenuated the negative effects of age on the memory and perceptual speed tasks.

Predictors of crossword puzzle proficiency and moderators of age-cognition relations.

Four studies, each with approximately 200 adults between the ages of 18 and 80, were conducted to address two major goals. The first goal was to examine the relative contributions of different factors to the successful solution of crossword puzzles. Correlations and structural equation analyses revealed that general knowledge is the strongest predictor of crossword puzzle proficiency. Surprisingly, abstract reasoning ability, as measured by several different tests, had no direct relation to puzzle proficiency. The second goal of the project was to examine moderators of the relations between age and measures of both fluid and crystallized cognition. The results provide no evidence to suggest that amount of crossword puzzle experience reduces age-related decreases in fluid cognition or enhances age-related increases in crystallized cognition.

The effects of age and experience on memory for visually presented music.

Increased age is often associated with lower levels of performance in tests of memory for spatial information. The primary question in the current study was whether this relationship could be moderated as a function of one's relevant experience and/or knowledge. Stimulus materials consisted of short (7-11 note), visually presented musical melodies and structurally equivalent nonmusical stimuli. Participants (N = 128) were recruited from a wide range of age and experience levels. Although there were strong main effects of age and experience on memory for music, there was no evidence that the age-related differences in memory for these stimuli were smaller for individuals with moderate to large amounts of experience with music.

Interrelations of age, visual acuity, and cognitive functioning.

It has recently been suggested that a large proportion of the age-related influences on many measures of cognitive functioning is mediated through a single common factor. This hypothesis has been supported by the discovery that much of the age-related variance in different cognitive measures is shared, and is not distinct or independent. These earlier results were replicated in this project, and it was also discovered that measures of corrected visual acuity and processing speed share a very large proportion of the age-related variance in measures of working memory, associative learning, and concept identification. The apparent implication is that the common factor that appears to contribute to age-related differences in many cognitive measures is quite broad and may reflect a relatively general reduction in central nervous system functioning.

Aging, inhibition, working memory, and speed.

An implication of the hypothesis that failures of inhibition contribution to adult age differences in working memory (Hasher & Zacks, 1988) is that statistical control of measures of inhibition should reduce the age-related effects on working memory. This implication was tested in a study in which interference measures from three variants of a Stroop task served as the measures of inhibition. Although the age-related variance in measures of working memory was substantially reduced after control of the interference measures, the degree of attenuation was at least as large when speed measures from other tasks were controlled. Furthermore, additional analysis revealed that speed measures from tasks requiring oral, written, and keypress responses shared large proportions of their age-related variance. It was suggested that age-related influences on specific processes, such as inhibition, cannot be accurately assessed unless the contributions of more general age-related influences are taken into consideration.