ALERTMIND

INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING IN ADULTHOOD:GROWTH, MAINTENANCE, DECLINE, AND MODIFIABILITY

2005 SPECIAL LECTURE BY K. WARNER SCHAIE AND SHERRY L. WILLIS

A JOINT PROGRAM OF

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY ON AGING

AND METLIFE FOUNDATION

Does intellectual ability change uniformly through-

out adulthood or are different patterns of ability

present over the lifespan? What accounts for indi-

vidual differences in age-related changes in cogni-

tive ability, especially in late life? Can cognitive

decline with increasing age be reversed by educa-

tional intervention? In this monograph, Dr. K.

Warner Schaie and Dr. Sherry L. Willis discuss their

findings from the Seattle Longitudinal Study, which

spans three generations and almost 50 years.

American Society on Aging 833 Market St., suite 511 San Francisco, CA 94105Phone: (415) 974-9600

Fax: (415) 974-0300E-mail: mindalert@asaging.org

On the cover: Lucile Wiggins, the first centenarian in the Seattle Longitudinal Study, relaxes inthe home she shared with her younger sister in Bellingham, Wash. Lucile, who was in excellenthealth until one week before she passed away of a stroke at age 102, participated in the SeattleLongitudinal Study for more than 40 years. Photo by Charles Fick.

© 2005 American Society on Aging

INTRODUCTION

Cognitive fitness in late life is determined by a number of factors over the life course. Bystudying thousands of people over long periods of time in the Seattle Longitudinal

Study, husband-and-wife research team K. Warner Schaie and Sherry L. Willis shed light onthe differences between elders who maintain their intellectual functioning into late life andthose whose cognitive abilities decline.

In the lectures transcribed in this booklet, Dr. Schaie offers data on the developmental in-fluences throughout the lifespan that affect intellectual functioning; in addition, he dis-cusses how such data can be used for the early detection of the risk of late-life dementia.Dr. Willis outlines her research on how intellectual functioning in late life can be modifiedthrough cognitive training. She also explains why certain leisure activities contribute tobetter cognitive fitness in late life.

Dr. Schaie and Dr. Willis presented these lectures in March 2005 at the Joint Conference ofthe American Society on Aging and the National Council on the Aging as part of the Mind-Alert Program. Sponsored by the American Society on Aging and MetLife Foundation, Mind-Alert is dedicated to sharing the findings of the latest research on maintaining and enhanc-ing cognitive function in later life.

Also included in this booklet are profiles of the winners of the 2005 MindAlert Awards,which recognize programs that promote mental fitness in older adults, as well as an anno-tated list of past MindAlert monographs.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

MindAlert Lecture:Intellectual Functioning in Adulthood: Growth, Maintenance, Decline, and Modifiability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

2005 MindAlert Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

About the MindAlert Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19

Past MindAlert Special Lectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING IN ADULTHOOD:GROWTH, MAINTENANCE, DECLINE, AND MODIFIABILITY

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Dr. Schaie: I began my career wonderingabout the fact that I could observe someold people who were the very font of wis-dom and others who were pretty decrepit,uninteresting folks. Puzzling over thesevery different life courses, I decided thatthe only way to try to understand the rea-sons for those differences would be to fol-low the same people over long periods oftime. And so I started out, as everybodydoes, with a cross-sectional study for mydissertation research—but I continuedfollowing people in my study over time.Some of my classmates, all of whom areretired by now except for me, claim that I

didn’t get it right in the first place and soI had to continue doing it over and overagain. But in doing it over and overagain—next year the study will be 50years old—I think we’ve learned quite afew things, some of which Dr. Willis and Iwant to share with you.

I want to talk about a number of issuesthat need to be understood to see how in-tellectual functioning changes over thelife course: methodological issues; thegrowth, maintenance, and decline of cog-nitive functioning, as well as developmen-tal influences throughout the lifespanthat affect it; and how longitudinal dataof the kind that Dr. Willis and I have col-lected can be used to contribute to theearly detection of risk of late-life demen-tia. Then, Dr. Willis is going to spend quitea bit of time telling you about the possi-

bility of modifying the course of intellec-tual functioning as we get older, throughcognitive training.

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

The issues I want to deal with are thedifferences between normal and pathologi-cal aging, the problem of cross-sectionaldata vs. longitudinal data, the issue of co-hort and generational differences in levelof cognitive abilities and the rate ofchange of those abilities, and populationvs. family studies. Typically, people havethought of aging as a downward spiral:That is, some people think of aging as los-ing a marble a day, or a neuron a day, caus-ing inevitable decline. Some people wouldargue that our brains have so many con-nections, so much extra capacity, that thismodel of aging can’t be accurate. Peoplelose a lot more brain tissue in accidents,for example—much more than what is lostwith aging—and they do just fine. So per-haps much of the decline in cognitive abil-ity with aging may well be due to disuse.

But there’s also another issue, and that’sobsolescence. As it turns out, successivegenerations have functioned at higher andhigher cognitive levels, and though youmay not decline at all from the level youhad as a young adult, you may no longer becompetitive with the younger genera-tion—that’s obsolescence. You can alsothink of aging as development, becauseadults are agents of their own develop-ment—they can adopt healthy or un-healthy lifestyles; they can engage in stim-ulating activities or be couch potatoes.And then there is the issue of successful vs.unsuccessful aging. Some people gain wis-

DR. K. WARNER SCHAIE AND DR. SHERRY L. WILLIS

People who are too rigid don’t do very well in late

life because old age requires a lot of flexibility.

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dom with experience and function quiteadequately until the very end of life. Othersjust stick to the familiar and veer awayfrom interesting things in life—they wantto maintain routines and tend to have rigidpersonalities. People who are too rigiddon’t do very well in late life because oldage is a period of very rapid change that re-quires a lot of flexibility.

Two kinds of data have been used tocharacterize intellectual development interms of aging. One type of study looks atage differences, or what we might callinter-individual variations across groups—that’s when we take people at one pointin time and compare people of differentages. In gathering such cross-sectionaldata, we have no idea whatsoever whethera particular older person was ever at thelevel of the younger person we’re using forcomparison, so it’s really in a way compar-ing apples and oranges: We don’t knowabout people’s specific life histories. Onthe other hand, if we really want to under-stand how people change over their lifecourse, we must look at age changes—intra-individual changes over time thatoccur within groups. Then there’s also theissue of generational differences. In ourresearch, we have observed importantchanges across generations, which can bestudied either in populations or in biolog-ically related individuals—we’ve actuallydone both.

THE SEATTLE LONGITUDINAL STUDY

In the Seattle Longitudinal Study,which forms the basis of what I haveto tell you, we’ve looked at cognitivechanges and cognitive differences withage, we’ve examined the antecedents ofindividual differences in aging, we’ve triedinterventions to slow cognitive aging,we’ve studied generational differences,and we’ve done studies within families. Infact, we have covered three generations inour familial studies: We have some mid-

dle-aged and young people in our studyfor whom we have data at the same agesfor both a parent and a grandparent.We’ve also worked on the early detectionof dementia.

Our conceptual model argues that youcannot understand intellectual functioningper se unless you understand the variousinfluences that affect it. These influencesinclude issues of heritability—in otherwords, what genetic predispositions forcognitive ability or decline are inherited—

the effect of personality styles, currentfamily environment, and socioeconomicstatus; and the influence of chronic diseaseon cognitive ability as people age. We’velooked at cognitive ability and aging interms of two different end stages, by study-ing late-life cognitive functioning and bylooking at the neuropathology found in au-topsy—a good many of the older partici-pants in our study have allowed us to studytheir brains after their death.

Six abilities represent most of what isgenerally described as human intelligence:verbal ability (vocabulary), spatial orien-tation (the ability to identify where youare in three dimensions), inductive rea-soning (the basis of problem-solving abil-ity), numeric ability, perceptual speed,and verbal memory (the ability to recallwhat you have read). We have multipletests for all of these abilities; followingare some examples of how we go aboutmeasuring them. For verbal ability, we usea simple vocabulary test—participants are

Six abilities represent most of what is generally

described as human intelligence:

verbal ability, spatial orientation, inductive

reasoning, numeric ability, perceptual speed,

and verbal memory.

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•given a word and asked to find the onethat’s most like it. For spatial ability, weask people to rotate in space some ab-stract or familiar object, such as the letterF. We studied problem solving and reason-ing by asking participants to find the prin-ciple in a series—for example, given a let-ter series, people must find the letter thatcontinues the series. And for numeric abil-ity, we asked people to check addition andsubtraction problems.

We have followed individuals in ourstudy to get longitudinal data, and we’vealso brought in new samples of peopleages 25 to 81 at each point in our studyfor cross-sectional information. Cross-sec-tional age differences that we observed atour last data point show very few age dif-ferences in verbal ability and numericability in people of different ages, but in-tensive differences that are almost linearin nature for all of the other abilities. The

problem with these cross-sectional data isthat they do not take into account wherepeople started from, whether they werestrong or weak in certain abilities tobegin with. As we gathered more andmore data from people over time, we wereable to estimate the longitudinal changesthat occurred within individuals, andthere we found a very different story. Thelongitudinal data suggest that there is ac-tually some gain in cognitive functioningfrom young adulthood through midlife, onaverage, and that in fact anybody whoshows decline prior to age 60 probablyhas some neuropathology.

We still find age differences in cognitiveability with the longitudinal data: Afterthe 60s, decline is at first very minimal—but it increases steadily as people moveinto their 80s. But even in the high 80s,

there are significant differences in cogni-tive ability: For example, the data showthat verbal ability remains at a fairly highlevel while numeric ability suffers a verysubstantial decline. The reason we didn’tsee this effect in the cross-sectionaldata—which showed no significantchange in numeric ability with age—isthat while most abilities have shiftedacross generations positively, numericability has actually declined as people relyincreasingly on hand calculators and thelike. In other words, the overall decline innumeric ability in cohorts of younger gen-erations made the numeric ability of oldergenerations look stronger in old age thanit actually is.

DEVELOPMENTAL INFLUENCES ONINTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING

If you think that everybody changes inthe same way over time, the following is acautionary tale. We’ve found that almostany pattern you might want is representedin the data, from virtual stability to verydramatic change—and we’ve found goodreasons for this. But, one has to be verycareful in looking at the resulting averagesas being really characteristic of any singleindividual. The other interesting questionthat people ask is, if one ability goes,does everything go? Well, we have data onthe cumulative risk of decline for five dif-ferent abilities for at least six points intime several years apart. (See Figure 1.) Asit turns out, chances are that by age 60 orso everybody will decline on some ability.But virtually nobody has declined on allfive abilities even when they’re in their80s. So it’s not like everything goes as weage, but some things go—and we thinkmostly those things go where you havenot had any opportunity or good reason topractice those particular skills. We canconclude, then, that patterns of aging arevery individual. Some abilities, on aver-age, decline with age, but no particularability declines for every person.

Some abilities decline with age, but no particular

ability declines for every person.

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Here’s an interesting exercise for tryingto figure out when you are going to expe-rience the first decline on a particularability. The time when people show a de-cline in a particular ability on averagehappens in the 60s—somewhat later onverbal ability, somewhat earlier on spatialability. But other variables also determinewhether cognitive decline is going to hap-pen in the 60s for you as an individual.For example, if you are a woman, you geta credit of approximately five years, mean-ing you are going to experience adecline five years later than theoverall average for the total pop-ulation. If you are highly edu-cated, you get about a year’scredit for every year of educationabove the average education ofthe population.

On the other hand, if you havedeclined in flexibility—in otherwords, if you have become morerigid during the seven years priorto the assessment, you will get anegative credit because rigidpeople tend to show decline incognitive abilities earlier thanflexible people. If you have expe-rienced above-average success inyour life, your individual declineis going to occur later. Many ofyou may find that you are notlikely to experience a declineuntil very close to your death ormaybe not even then, becauseyou’re very likely to die before you aregoing to experience significant decline.The educated portion of the population al-ways has this advantage.

Why is it that people are so different intheir patterns? One of the things we’velearned from our longitudinal studies isthat people have different experiences,and we have characterized some that arefavorable for maintenance of intellectualfunctioning. Some of these experiences

are a function of genetics: For example, ifyou do not have any cardiovascular orother chronic disease, you’re going to bemuch at advantage in maintaining cogni-tive function. Also, if you live in favorableenvironmental circumstances—that is,you have above-average education, occu-pational pursuits that involve high com-plexity, above-average income, and intactfamilies—all of those things are pluspoints that are likely to help you maintainintellectual function in late life.

Furthermore, involvement in activitiescharacteristic of an intellectually stimulat-ing environment is a favorable factor: Peo-ple who have extensive reading habits,travel, and attend cultural and educationalevents, for example, are also at an advan-tage. And as I mentioned earlier, having aflexible personality style at midlife has apositive effect on maintaining cognitiveability. Another interesting factor is beingmarried to an intelligent spouse. In ourstudy, we followed a number of married

Figure 1. Cumulative risk of decline of one or more of five mental abilities at ages 32to 88. Source: Schaie, K. W. (1989). “The hazards of cognitive aging.” Gerontologist,29: 484–493. Reproduced by permission of the Gerontological Society of America.

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•couples over a long period of time. It turnsout that married couples’ intellectual per-formance converges over time: The spousewith lower cognitive functioning early inthe marriage moves in the direction of thehigher-functioning spouse, cognitivelyspeaking. So the bottom line is that youshould marry someone who’s smarter thanyou are. High levels of perceptual process-ing speed are also an advantage, and beingsatisfied with one’s accomplishments is aplus point. So those are things that distin-guish people who function very well intoold age as opposed to those who decline.

GENERATIONAL EFFECTS

Now, what about the issue of trying todeal with generational differences, of sep-

arating them from age differences? Theonly way that can be done is by studyingsuccessive generations over the same agerange, because then you’re holding ageconstant, so you can tell whether people’sdifferences stem from their generationallevel or not. To do so, you’ve got to havesamples from different generations of in-dividuals who are followed over time when

they are in the same age range. When youdo that, you can plot the cumulative ad-vantage—or disadvantage—that succes-sive generations have. Our data showsome gain over a seven-year period—sub-stantial gain for some abilities—and lossfor others, notably for numeric ability andverbal ability. That is, right now one ofthe reasons why old people look like theyhave not declined on verbal ability mayvery well have to do with the fact thatthey’re at an advantage at this age withrespect to later-born cohorts, who mayhave started out with less verbal ability.

One of the things that over the lastcentury has gone up virtually linearly iswhat we call inductive reasoning, or thebasis for problem-solving skills, and we

think that has to do withchanges in educational prac-tice where discovery meth-ods rather than rote learningare emphasized, and also be-cause the accessibility of in-formation has grown dramat-ically. On the other hand,numeric ability is a functionwhere rote learning is clearlyessential, and giving up rotelearning altogether is proba-bly a bad educational mis-take. For example, if youdon’t have some basic nu-meric ability, then you’re introuble—you won’t even beable to tell whether the an-swer in your calculator reallyis probable or not. These so-cietal changes obviously are

very important and are linked to genera-tional effects on cognitive functioning.

Some of the changes that have occurredover generations are protective in a sense,but others cause more risk—like theprevalence of obesity, which has increasedthe risk of cardiovascular disease and dia-betes, which have a negative effect on

Figure 2. Cognitive change in biologically related individuals based on 14-year data.Source: Data from the Seattle Longitudinal Study (Schaie, 2005).

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cognitive ability. And so we have a trade-off. One of the things that we suspect isvery likely to occur is that individual vari-ability within the same generational co-hort is going to increase because of eco-nomics—the increasing gap between therich and the poor means the abilityof people to have access to moreprotective factors for cognitivefunction, as well as to be betterable to combat the risk factors forcognitive decline, will vary widely.

It’s important to understand thatthere are generational differences incognitive level, but it’s also impor-tant to think about the possibilitythat perhaps it is reasonable forpeople to stay in the workforce alittle longer. The basis for this argu-ment is that successive generationsnot only have become more able,but also the rate of cognitive de-cline with age has slowed down.Looking at a group of individualsover the same age range—and Ipurposely chose people from ages 60 to74 because that’s the most probable rangein which one might argue for people stay-ing in the workforce longer—it turns outthere really hasn’t been all that muchslowing of cognitive ability. But thesedata are from unrelated people, so this re-sult is not as satisfactory as it could be.

We can study generational effects evenmore precisely by acquiring data sets frombiologically related individuals so that wecan hold constant at least part of the ge-netic variables. And we’ve been able to dothat—we now have something like 500pairs of related individuals on whom wehave data at relatively close ages. Whenwe plot the same data for people who arebiologically related, we see a lot more evi-dence for a slowing of the overall rate ofcognitive aging. The level of cognitiveability for the children we studied is upabove that of their parents, but also the

parents declined during that period, be-tween ages 60 and 67. For the youngergeneration, except for numeric ability, theabilities seem to be either stable or stillgoing up at that age range. We’ve very re-cently finished compiling this data over a

14-year period; it looks like for the nextseven years, from ages 67 to 74, there’sless of a decline for the younger genera-tion than was true for their parents at thesame age. (See Figure 2.) So from thatpoint of view, people could delay retire-ment and stay in the workforce longer.

EARLY DETECTION OF DEMENTIA

In conclusion, I want to say just a littlebit about early detection of dementia.When I started this Seattle LongitudinalStudy, nobody knew much about Alz-heimer’s disease, so I didn’t learn aboutAlzheimer’s disease when I was going toschool. But it turns out that the kind ofdata we have are very relevant to the earlydetection of risk for dementia because wecan look back and see whether we couldhave identified people who now have be-come clinically diagnosable. We had neu-ropsychologists screen our population—

Figure 3. Cognitive change over seven years by Apo-E allele type. Source: Datafrom the Seattle Longitudinal Study (Schaie, 2005).

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•all community-dwelling elders ages 60 andolder—and we could find only about two-and-a-half percent who were probably im-paired and another four-and-a-half per-cent who were borderline; there was alarger group, about 22 percent, that hadsomething going on, but we couldn’t quiteput our finger on it—these older adultsprobably should be monitored to keeptrack of their cognitive health.

We also were able to get information onApo-E, the gene that is supposed to be as-sociated with Alzheimer’s disease. Thereare six possible Apo-E genotypes, with thepresence of the E-4 allele being linked tothe disease in a dose-dependent manner.We found that a fair portion of our sample

(about 25%) have one E-4 allele, but veryfew people have two (less than 3%). TheE-2/2 combination was omitted becauseof its low frequency of occurrence in oursample—people with this combinationtend to die early, so they don’t getAlzheimer’s disease because they neverget to old age. When we look at the seven-year cognitive change by allele type, wefind that it’s the people who have an E-2/4 or an E-4/4 allele combination whoare more likely to decline, particularly onmemory. (See Figure 3.) These are peoplewho are not impaired and have not beendiagnosed, but they may be on the way.

We’ve also been able to get some veryinteresting data from the people who letus do autopsies. We have cognitive datafor two women over a 35-year period forwhom autopsies were conducted shortlyafter the last time we assessed them,

when they were in their late 70s. One ladyhad what was described as one of thosesuper-clean brains at autopsy, with notangles or plaques; the other had all theclassical neuropathological symptoms ofAlzheimer’s disease. It appears that wecan go back to our data about 14 yearsbefore people get clinically diagnosedwith dementia and identify individualswho might be at risk for the disease. Wecan do that from the kind of assessmentthat’s done in the normal community-dwelling population. I think that’s veryimportant, because if we ever get to thepoint of having some prophylactic medica-tions for dementia, then we certainly wantto know who is at risk so they can takethe appropriate preventive measures.

Given this overview of some of thethings we’ve learned in our studies of nor-mal aging, I now want to hand thingsover to my colleague, Dr. Willis, who isgoing to tell you about what we’ve done,particularly under her guidance, to try tosee if we can slow cognitive aging in thenormal population.

Dr. Willis: I’d like to talk to you aboutour work on cognitive training, or stayingmentally active. Now, there are a lot ofreasons for staying mentally fit in old age.One of the most important is we know thatmental ability is related to independentfunctioning—the ability to read one’smedication labels, plan nutritious meals,drive—all of these are related to the cog-nitive abilities Dr. Schaie has told youabout. Another interesting finding fromlongitudinal research is that higher func-tioning on cognitive activities appears tobe protective against cognitive impair-ment; that is, researchers have found thatmore highly educated people have lesslikelihood of Alzheimer’s disease and de-mentia, or experience it at a later age.

We don’t know exactly why this effectoccurs, but there are several hypotheses

We can look at data

about 14 years before people get clinically

diagnosed with dementia and identify

individuals who might be at risk for the disease.

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about why cognitive activity or educationmay be protective against late-life demen-tia. One is that continuing to challengeoneself cognitively into old age may havea direct impact on brain development,contributing to dendritic growth andstructural changes in the brain. Anotherpossibility is that if one continues tostimulate the brain and its mental abili-ties, one reaches a higher level of cogni-tive function—so one has further to de-cline before one does reach a criticalthreshold in Alzheimer’s disease or otherdementias. We think we see Alzheimer’soccurring later in people who have re-mained cognitively active because theyhad a higher level of cognitive function-ing earlier in the lifespan.

The other possibility to explain the pro-tective nature of mental fitness againstdementia is compensatory activities. Weknow that higher levels of education areassociated with higher levels of verbalability, as well as higher levels of numericability—what we call crystallized abili-ties—and these may compensate for someof the losses that one experiences in spa-tial ability or even memory with age. Weknow memory is highly related to verbalability because some of the strategies weuse to remember are verbal in nature.Again, people whose brains can compen-sate for losses in some abilities—fill inthe gaps, so to speak—will have a higherlevel of cognitive functioning overall,which seems to be protective. So main-taining mental fitness in old age is a goodidea no matter what the specific mecha-nism of protection against Alzheimer’sturns out to be.

In addition, people who are more highlyeducated, functioning at a higher level,feel a greater sense of empowerment.They’re more willing to take on challengingtasks; they persist at challenging tasks,and—because they have confidence inthemselves—they will more often take on

new tasks. For all these reasons, stayingmentally fit is very important in old age.

INTERVENTION STUDIES OFMENTAL FITNESS

A number of different approaches havebeen used in the study of staying mentallycompetent into old age. Observationalstudies, including longitudinal studies, arethe type that Dr. Schaie has talked to youabout. What I’m going to be talking pri-

marily about are intervention studies,which are experimental studies where youtake a group of elders and administer abaseline assessment, do an interventionwith them followed by a post-test, thenfollow them for some period of time to seeif there’s maintenance in the trainingtechniques. We’ve been lucky in the Seat-tle study—in addition to this pre-test,treatment, post-test design, we have lon-gitudinal data on participants prior to theintervention, so we know whether theyhad declined or not prior to the interven-tion we did.

I’m going to tell you briefly about someof our cognitive training research, as wellas a newer approach to intervention calledcollaborative learning. Collaborative learn-ing involves pairs of individuals gettingtogether and learning without a trainer—at the forefront of this method is the useof technology such as CD-ROMS. I’m alsogoing to discuss some research we’ve doneusing older couples. Finally, there’s thewhole issue of leisure activities: Are someof the pastimes that people engage in forfun related to cognitive functioning?

Abilities that show relatively

early decline when people are in their 60s

include reasoning, spatial orientation,

processing speed, and memory.

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•The majority of work on cognitive train-

ing, both our own and the work of others,has focused on abilities that show rela-tively early decline when people are intheir 60s: reasoning, spatial orientation,processing speed, and memory. There arehuge individual differences, but theseabilities are the ones that are more likelyto show average decline at the earliest

ages. The most common paradigm in thepast for doing cognitive training studiesfrom a research perspective is studying in-dividuals working with a trainer, eitherone-on-one or in small groups.

In our own work on community-dwellingolder adults, we focused on two abilitiesthat we had already examined in the Seat-tle Longitudinal Study: inductive reasoningand spatial orientation. Inductive reason-ing is being able to see a pattern in a se-ries of numbers or letters or some otherkind of information and the ability to usethat pattern to solve other problems. Spa-tial orientation is the ability to orient one-self in space. This ability is very importantfor reading a road map, for example, or forlooking at a diagram of a building and fig-uring out how to get to a specific room.

COGNITIVE TRAINING: METHODS AND DATA

We conducted five one-hour, one-on-one training sessions in each participant’shome; the training procedures used thetypical educational techniques of teachingpeople strategies, then giving them prac-tice on problems, offering feedback, andmodeling solutions. In one of our trainingstudies on inductive reasoning, we lookedat people’s scores in this ability from 1970

to 1984, then did training with them in1984 and tested them again. We classifiedpeople based on whether or not they haddeclined in ability or had remained stableduring the 14 years prior to training. Somepeople showed relatively little changeover the 14-year period, but we saw a pre-cipitous decline for others. One of ourquestions was, is training in a particularability effective with people who have de-clined vs. people who have not declined?

The good news is that both those whoremained stable and those who had de-clined over the prior 14-year periodshowed significant improvement as a re-sult of the training—and what’s very in-teresting is that the decline group got al-most back up to where they were 14 yearsprior to training. So we have at least par-tial remediation of decline in ability as afunction of training. The other goodnews—particularly important, perhaps, forkeeping people in the workplace—is thatold dogs can indeed learn new tricks. As aresult of training, the elders in the stablegroup are functioning at a higher levelthan they were even 14 years previously.

Dr. Schaie told you about cohort differ-ences based on generation—people startat different levels of ability based on theirbirth cohort. The question is, do all of thesecohorts experience cognitive training ef-fects? The data show that indeed they do,but what’s interesting is that the cohort ef-fects remain. Even though all of the partic-ipants in our study experienced traininggain, the training—at least at the level weoffered—was not effective in wiping outthe cohort differences in ability level.

Now, some caveats. The kind of trainingthat we did originally in the Seattle Longi-tudinal Study is very effective, because itremediates training deficits, works in dif-ferent cohorts and is maintained yearslater. We followed these people over sevenyears after training and still saw group dif-

One very astute older woman said to my trainer,

“Honey, let’s get this straight—is it your problem

or my problem we’re gonna solve?”

ferences between people who had beentrained and those who had not beentrained on a specific ability. So there are alot of positive things about this training.However, people with serious cardiovascu-lar disease usually show fewer training ef-fects than those without, so the effective-ness of cognitive training has its limits. Inaddition, this type of training is very ex-pensive and very time consuming. We didone-on-one training in each individual’shome to get a maximum effect, but itwould be prohibitive to administer thatkind of training to a national sample or toolder adults in general. So the search nowis for other ways of providingtraining to individuals for cog-nitive stimulation.

One of the things we askourselves is, when we do thetraditional kind of trainingwhere we bring in a trainerfor just five one-hour ses-sions, how can we provide ad-ditional cognitive stimula-tion? Rather than thistraditional, intensive one-shotmethod, what we need iswhat I call the drip method.The drip method involves con-tinual stimulation throughoutthe environment in the con-text in which people live, overlonger periods of time.

How can we provide that?We could use technology toprovide that kind of continualcognitive stimulation, but an-other way is to use peoplewho are in the older adult’senvironment. And one of the people whois in that environment is the spouse, atleast for a number of older people. Basedon this thinking, one of the first ways wemoved beyond traditional training was tolook at what we call collaborative learningin older couples. We gave them the train-

ing material to use by themselves in theirhomes, without a trainer; this researchwas done in collaboration with Dr. Jen-nifer Margrett, who was a postdoctoralstudent in our lab.

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

We had a control group that got notraining, we had couples where eachspouse was assigned to work on the mate-rial alone, and we had a third group wherethe couples worked together on the train-ing material. Couples were randomly as-signed to the three conditions. In terms of

initial training, we found that both the in-dividuals who trained alone and the cou-ples who trained together significantly im-proved compared with the control group,but there was no real difference in trainingeffects between the couples trained indi-vidually and the couples trained together.

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5

4

3

2

1

Pretest Im Post Del Post

Figure 4. Collaborative learning in older couples. Source: Unpublished data from theSeattle Longitudinal Study.

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•Now, this result is positive in the sensethat these people are learning this mate-rial without a trainer, through self-instruc-tion. We followed up six months later, andfound that the couples who trained to-gether showed greater maintenance of thestrategies they learned than the peoplewho trained individually. (See figure 4.)We take this outcome to mean that if youtrain people together—and it doesn’t haveto be spouses, it could be peers—peopleserve as reminders and reinforcers of thetraining effect for each other even afterthe formal training program is over.

When we started this research, we wentto older people in central Pennsylvaniawhere we live and we introduced the cog-nitive fitness training by telling them thatwe were going to train them how to solve

problems. One very astute older womansaid to my trainer, “Honey, let’s get thisstraight—is it your problem or my prob-lem we’re gonna solve?” That was some-thing like 30 years ago, and we’re still try-ing to answer that question. We know thatbasic problem-solving abilities, such asreasoning and spatial ability, are very im-portant in maintaining independent func-tioning and efficacy in old age, but howdo they relate to what people actually doin their everyday lives, like making meals,taking medicine, driving, shopping at thesupermarket or using a telephone? Peoplewho provide services to elders talk aboutthese activities of daily living and instru-mental activities of daily living, which areconsidered critical to being able to func-tion independently in our society.

How do the basic abilities that we’vestudied in the Seattle Longitudinal Study—

verbal ability, spatial orientation, inductivereasoning, numeric ability, perceptualspeed, verbal memory—relate to beingable to do these tasks of daily living? Typi-cally, the way the instrumental activities ofdaily living are measured is just by askingpeople whether they can use the phone ortake their medicine independently, for ex-ample. But we wanted a performance-based measure. So for each of the domainsof activities—health and medications, fi-nances, household, telephone and commu-nications, transportation, shopping, foodpreparation—graduate students and Ifound materials that older adults use intheir everyday lives and developed prob-lems related to these materials.

For example, a very simple problemwould be showing an older adult a medica-tion label and asking how many doses ofmedicine can you take in 24 hours, with theanswer available right there in the instruc-tions. But we could also pose a more diffi-cult problem like, “Mr. Jones is a heavysmoker who has a terrible cough; whatshould he do?” To solve this problem, youhave to read the warning on the medica-tion and realize that Mr. Jones should prob-ably see a doctor after a certain amount oftime rather than continue to take this med-ication. This more difficult kind of problemrequires putting different pieces of the in-formation together to solve it, a processcalled combinatorial reasoning.

So the question is, do these basic abili-ties that Dr. Schaie has been examining inthe Seattle Longitudinal Study underlie theability to do these kinds of everyday tasks?And what do we know about age-relatedchanges in these everyday tasks as relatedto the basic abilities, and what’s the hopeof enhancing people’s ability to handleeveryday cognitive tasks? Longitudinaldata for reading short documents, such asa prescription drug label vs. lengthy docu-ments, such as an income tax form, show aslightly longer period of stability on these

It’s usually in the 70s or even early 80s before we

see significant decline in community-dwelling

elders on activities of daily living.

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everyday tasks than on basic abilities likereasoning or spatial orientation. So thegood news is that it’s usually in the 70s oreven early 80s before we see significantdecline in community-dwelling elders onactivities of daily living.

But why would the capacity to do theseactivities stay stable when testing specificabilities shows decline? Because when yougive people a test like we designed to un-derstand medicine-bottle labels, you findthat these everyday tasks are cognitivelycomplex, meaning they involve multipleabilities. To read and understand a pre-scription drug label, for example, youneed verbal ability, mathematical ability,memory, and speed of processing. Wethink that’s why we see longer stabilitywith age for everyday problem-solvingthan for the basic abilities, because multi-ple abilities are involved—and, as Dr.Schaie showed you, nobody declines on allsix abilities at once.

Therefore, some compensation may begoing on—if you have a deficit in reason-ing ability, for example, you can stay sta-ble on everyday activities longer overallbecause your other basic abilities are stillstrong. So that’s the interesting point. Butit makes doing cognitive training oneveryday tasks much more challenging,because it means not focusing on any oneability but trying to enhance all of theseabilities, which all seem to be related toperformance of everyday tasks.

We have found some preliminary evi-dence that training on basic abilities,such as reasoning ability, is related to asubset of everyday tasks. We’ve found thatpeople who improved their reasoning abil-ity through training did better on ourtests of everyday problem-solving relatedto meals, household, transportation, anduse of the phone. And, interestingly, wefound that people who got training withspatial ability did better on management

of finances. When we look back at the ma-terial, much of the financial material is ina graph, chart, or schedule format, and wethink that spatial ability helps people readthose graphs—going down the columnand across the row, for example. So wehave some evidence that training on thesebasic abilities does transfer to everydayproblem-solving. Another challenge re-lated to this training would be setting pri-orities on the abilities and activities ofmost importance to each individual, andtraining people accordingly.

LEISURE ACTIVITIES

Now, what about leisure activities? Dowe know anything about people who workcrossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles andhow such leisure activities relate to thesevery basic abilities? Indeed, fluid ability—which involves reasoning, memory, and

spatial orientation—and crystallized abil-ity, which involves verbal ability and nu-meric ability, have relatively good correla-tions with these types of leisure activities.The relationship with abilities varies bytype of leisure activity: Doing crosswordpuzzles is more related to verbal ability,doing jigsaw puzzles to spatial ability, andthe frequency of game playing is associ-ated with proficiency. What we see in peo-ple who do jigsaw puzzles is that the spa-tial component reflected in fluid ability isparticularly strong.

We’ve found that about 25 percent ofthe older adults in our samples regularlydo crossword puzzles, but 40 percent to 50percent don’t ever do those kinds ofthings. And we found that proficiency inbasic abilities is fairly good both in those

Better basic abilities are related to leisure

activities like game-playing and

doing crossword puzzles.

who do crossword puzzles and in thosewho do jigsaw puzzles—though for jigsawpuzzles, particularly for people ages 75-plus, the proficiency is somewhat lower.So, although we have not done researchusing jigsaw puzzles or crossword puzzlesas a form of intervention, we think thereis some solid evidence that certain leisureactivities are related to cognitive func-tioning and could be used as a form ofcognitive stimulation.

SUMMARY

The majority of community-dwelling,nondemented older adults can, throughbrief training, improve their cognitiveability, remediate prior decline, and main-tain the training effects for several years.In everyday tasks that involve multipleabilities and are cognitively complex, age-related declines occur somewhat later thandecline for basic abilities—possibly be-cause of the multiple abilities involved.Also, there’s some evidence that reliable

training gain on basic abilities is associ-ated with enhanced functioning on every-day tasks. Couples can improve basic abil-ity through self-directed instruction, andthere does seem to be a connection be-tween the quality of marital relationshipsand the efficacy of collaborative learning.

And better basic abilities are related toleisure activities like game-playing anddoing crossword puzzles—activities thathave the advantage of being cognitivelychallenging while being enjoyable, so peo-ple are more likely to persist in doingthem. Keep in mind that chronic healthconditions may affect elders’ ability tokeep mentally fit, and pathologies such asdementia impose serious limits on the useof these kinds of interventions. And evenhealthy elders show individual differencesin their response to training in basic cog-nitive abilities. However, we believe thatsuch cognitive training can have very pos-itive effects on mental fitness and qualityof life for most community-dwelling elders.

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K.Warner Schaie, Evan Pugh Professor of Human Development and Psychology at ThePennsylvania State University and director of the Penn State Gerontology Center, is

regarded as one of the foremost scholars in the field of adult development and aging. Dr.Schaie holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Washington, where he is an af-filiate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science. Since 1956, he has directed the Seat-tle Longitudinal Study, one of the most extensive psychological research studies of intel-lectual performance in older adults. Data from the several thousand people who haveparticipated in the study show that most adults maintain their mental abilities well intotheir 60s—disproving scientists’ earlier belief that intelligence peaks in adolescence, thensteadily declines.

Dr. Schaie has authored or edited 45 books and more than 250 scholarly publications onthe psychology of aging, and has made substantial contributions to research methodologyin the field of adult development and aging. His landmark paper, “A General Model for theStudy of Developmental Problems,” originally published in 1965 in Psychological Bulletin,has been widely cited. In addition, he has served as editor of the Journal of Gerontology:Psychological Sciences.

A fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Psychological Asso-ciation, as well as past president and council representative of the APA Division of AdultDevelopment and Aging, Dr. Schaie received the APA Distinguished Scientific ContributionsAward in 1992. He also received the Kleemeier Award in 1987 from the Gerontological So-ciety of America for distinguished research contributions; the Method to Extend Researchin Time (MERIT) award from the National Institute on Aging in 1989; honorary doctorates

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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•in 1997 from Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany and in 2002 from West Vir-ginia University; and the 2001 Mensa Education and Research Foundation LifetimeAchievement Award.

Dr. Schaie has been a visiting scientist at a number of universities and institutes, most re-cently in 2002 at the University of Geneva. His lifelong research interests focus on cognitiveand personality development and modifiability from young adulthood to advanced old age,influences of health on behavior, and methodological issues in the developmental sciences.

Sherry L. Willis, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, is a professorof human development at The Pennsylvania State University. Funded by the National In-

stitute on Aging for more than 25 years, Dr. Willis’ research focuses particularly on develop-ing and evaluating training programs to help older adults compensate for age-related de-clines. She also looks at practical intelligence—how people solve everyday problems, suchas understanding the instructions on prescription drug labels. Dr. Willis recently was fundedfor a five-year study of midlife predictors of cognitive impairment in old age, a project thatreceived a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health.

From 1993–94, Dr. Willis was president of the American Psychological Association’s Divi-sion of Adult Development and Aging, and she holds fellow status in two divisions of theAmerican Psychological Association, as well as in the Gerontological Society of America. Shewas honored in 1992 by The Pennsylvania State University College of Health and Human De-velopment with the Pattishall Distinguished Research Award. In 1999, she was awardedPenn State’s Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement, and in 2001 she receivedthe Pauline Schmitt Russell Distinguished Research Career Award from the College of Healthand Human Development of The Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Willis serves as a reviewer for Neuropsychology, Cognition, and Aging, Psychology andAging, Clinical Gerontologist, and Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. She is acoauthor, with K. Warner Schaie, of the textbook Adult Development and Aging, now in itsfifth edition. She is also the author or coauthor of numerous journal articles and chaptersrelated to cognitive training in elders. Dr. Willis’ most recent interest has focused on cogni-tive development in midlife. She has coedited two recent volumes on midlife: Middle Adult-hood: A Lifespan Perspective, with Dr. Mike Martin, and The Baby Boomers Grow Up: Contem-porary Perspectives on Midlife, with Dr. Susan Whitbourne. With Dr. Schaie, she has beenclosely involved in the Seattle Longitudinal Study, which has been following participants foralmost 50 years.

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The ASA-MetLife Foundation MindAlertAwards were established to recognize

innovations in mental fitness program-ming for older adults. Inspired by researchshowing that cognitive decline is not in-evitable in aging, these awards recognizeprograms, products or tools that promotecognitive fitness in later life. The entriesare judged for their innovation, their basisin research, demonstration of their effec-tiveness, their potential for replicationand the extent to which they are accessi-ble to diverse populations of elders. Theawards are given in three categories:

• Programs that enhance mental fitnessfor older adults in general

• Programs that enhance mental fitnessfor elders with cognitive impairment

• Learning programs for older adults

The winners of this year’s awards wererecognized at the Joint Conference of theAmerican Society on Aging and the Na-tional Council on the Aging held inPhiladelphia March 10–13, 2005. For moreinformation on the MindAlert program,visit www.asaging.org/mindalert.

PROGRAM FOR GENERAL MENTAL FITNESS

Mental Fitness for Life: A 7 Step Guide to Healthy AgingSimon Fraser UniversityVancouver, British Columbia

A team of older adults from CenturyHouse, a senior recreation center on thewest coast of Canada, worked with a facil-itator and a researcher to develop theMental Fitness for Life program. The teamcame to define mental fitness as a condi-tion of optimal functioning achievedthrough regular exercise and a healthylifestyle that includes setting personalgoals, engaging in creative thinking,

learning and stimulating memory, speak-ing one’s mind, and thinking positively.

This research provided the basis for de-veloping and piloting the eight-week Men-tal Fitness for Life program for adults ages50 and older, and culminated in the bookMental Fitness for Life: Seven Steps toHealthy Aging (Bull Publishing, 2006). Inkeeping with the title, the final step forprogram participants is to develop a per-sonal mental fitness program for life.

Contact: Sandra Cusack, Simon FraserUniversity, 515 W. Hastings St., Vancouver,British Columbia, Canada V6B-5K3; (604)291-5177; scusack@sfu.ca; Wendy Thomp-son, 3790 Gerry St., Richmond, British Co-lumbia, Canada V7E-2T5; (604) 275-0091.

PROGRAM FOR ELDERS WITHCOGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT

TimeSlipsCenter on Age and CommunityUniversity of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

The TimeSlips method is a storytellingtechnique that encourages people withdementia to develop and enhance theircommunication skills by creating storiesbased on imagination rather than reminis-cence. The National TimeSlips Project,headquartered at the Center on Age andCommunity at the University of Wisconsin,Milwaukee, offers training in the methodto paid and unpaid facilitators in demen-tia care settings.

TimeSlips storytelling groups conductedin adult day programs showed positiveoutcomes for participants, who were lessagitated and communicated more on thedays of storytelling. With a grant from theCommonwealth Fund, TimeSlips has estab-lished six regional training bases across

2005 MINDALERT AWARDS

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•the United States and has embarked on aquantitative study of the method in 20long-term care facilities.

Contact: Anne Basting, Center on Age andCommunity, University of Wisconsin—Mil-waukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53211;(414) 229-2732; basting@uwm.edu.

LEARNING PROGRAMS FOR OLDER ADULTS

Understanding Age-Related MemoryLoss and DementiaS. Oregon Research and Extension CenterOregon State University, Central Point

Learning through volunteer endeavorscan stimulate cognitive function for olderadults in meaningful ways. UnderstandingAge-Related Memory Loss and Dementia isa two-hour workshop that provides instruc-tion to Meals-on-Wheels volunteers, whodeliver food to homebound older adults.

The program provides practical, easy-to-use information on healthy aging—an ef-fective tool for addressing the age-relatedmemory problems of many of the meal re-cipients. Drawing from current research,the information provided in the workshopvividly demonstrates how various lifestylechoices—such as good nutrition—havethe potential to positively or negativelyaffect memory in elders.

Contact: Sharon Johnson, Oregon StateUniversity, Southern Oregon Research andExtension Center, 569 Hanley Rd., CentralPoint, OR 97502; (541) 776-7371, ext.210; s.johnson@oregonstate.edu.

VOCAL: Voices of Community Action and LeadershipWestchester Public-Private Partnership for Aging ServicesMount Vernon, New York

A nonpartisan advocacy education pro-gram, VOCAL is designed to involve older

adults and youth in the political process.The program helps maintain the essentialmental fitness of participating elders andencourages their continued involvementin the civic life of their communities.Through a selection of topical workshopschosen with the input of participants, VOCAL

rouses interest in and gives information oncurrent issues that concern older adults.

Skills training sessions focus on keyareas of speaking, writing, leadership, andcoalition-building. Community partnersfrom local organizations, clubs, businesses,and agencies generate programs that ad-dress the interests and needs of diversepopulations.

Contact: Reva Greenberg, WestchesterPublic-Private Partnership for Aging Ser-vices, 9 S. First Ave., 10th Floor, Mount Ver-non, NY 10583; (914) 472-4551; revag@optonline.net.

AWARDS REVIEW COMMITTEE

The American Society on Aging ex-presses gratitude to the review committeefor their work in assessing the MindAlertaward submissions:

James Birren, Center on Aging, Univer-sity of California, Los Angeles; Dean Ble-vins, Central Arkansas Veterans HealthCare System, North Little Rock, Ark.; San-dra Cusack, Gerontology Research Centre,Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Brit-ish Columbia; Deanna Eversoll, Universityof Nebraska, Lincoln; Barbara Ginsberg,My Turn Program, Kingsborough Commu-nity College, Brooklyn, N.Y.; RebeccaGoodman, Osher Lifelong Learning Insti-tute, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hon-olulu; Darby Morhardt, Cognitive Neurol-ogy and Alzheimer’s Disease Center,Northwestern University Feinberg Schoolof Medicine, Chicago; Kathy Porsella,Evergreen Society, Johns Hopkins Univer-sity, Columbia, Md.

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The MindAlert Program seeks to dissemi-nate research and innovative practices

that address the steps that older adults cantake to maintain and enhance cognitiveand mental functions in their later years.The program, established by the AmericanSociety on Aging (ASA) in 2001 and sup-ported with funding from MetLife Founda-tion, has the following components:

• An annual MindAlert lecture andmonograph, which impart the latest re-search findings on maintaining and en-hancing cognitive function in late life.

• The ASA-MetLife Foundation Mind-Alert Awards, which honor innovativecommunity-based programs that translateresearch into practical activities that pro-mote cognitive health in elders.

• A Web-based clearinghouse of re-sources related to maintenance and en-hancement of cognitive and mental func-tioning in late life.

• A curriculum on promoting cognitivehealth that aging-services and healthcareproviders can implement in a wide varietyof settings with older adults.

• A trainers bureau and train-the-train-ers program to facilitate the implementa-tion of cognitive vitality programs in suchsettings as senior centers, adult learningprograms in community colleges, and parkand recreation programs.

For more information about the Mind-Alert program, including its Web-basedclearinghouse of resources on mental fit-ness, visit www.asaging.org/mindalert, orcontact the American Society on Aging atmindalert@asaging.org.

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY ON AGING

The American Society onAging is the largest associa-tion of professionals in thefield of aging in the UnitedStates. Founded in 1954, ASAseeks to promote the well-being of older adults and their

families by enhancing the abilities andcommitment of those who work with them.To that end, ASA sponsors a wide variety ofconferences, networking opportunities,and Web-based training. The organizationalso publishes a quarterly journal, abimonthly newspaper, seven quarterlynewsletters, and an e-mail newsletter forits members. To obtain more informationon ASA or to join, call (800) 537-9728 orvisit www.asaging.org.

MINDALERT PROGRAM SPONSOR:

MetLife Foundation, established in 1976 bythe Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,has been involved in a variety of aging-re-lated initiatives. Since 1986, the founda-tion has supported research on Alzheimer’sdisease through the MetLife FoundationAwards for Medical Research and has con-tributed more than $9.5 million to effortsto find a cure. In addition, the foundationhas provided support for a traveling exhibiton memory; a public-education video foruse by caregivers and families of peoplewith Alzheimer’s disease; and support forhealthy-aging projects addressing issues ofcaregiving, intergenerational activities,health and wellness programs, and volun-teer opportunities. MetLife Foundationsupports health, education, civic, and cul-tural programs throughout the UnitedStates. For more information about thefoundation, visit www.metlife.org.

ABOUT THE MINDALERT PROGRAM

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The annual MindAlert monographs from 2001 to the present are available on the AmericanSociety on Aging website at www.asaging.org/mindalert as free, easily downloadable PDF

files. Past monographs:

GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE AGING BRAIN!Nationally known brain researchers Marian Diamond and Arnold Scheibel describe theirgroundbreaking studies of brain function and the optimistic implications for successfulaging. (2001)

BRAIN HEALTH FROM 1 TO 100Paul Nussbaum, a leading clinical neuropsychologist, describes what he refers to as a healthpromotion opportunity of unprecedented stature: the ability to foster our own brain well-ness for healthy, functional aging. (2002)

CENTENARIANS: LESSONS ON LIVING LONG AND LIVING WELLHead of the renowned New England Centenarian Study, Thomas Perls shares the findings ofhis research and talks about how we all can make our later years healthy, vital ones. (2003)

UNITING THE HEART AND MIND: HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFEGene Cohen, a pioneer in the field of creative aging, explains the implications of his fourdevelopmental stages of late life and how these phases represent a richly creative period,full of personal growth and societal engagement. (2004)

PAST MINDALERT SPECIAL LECTURES

ALERTMIND

INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING IN ADULTHOOD:GROWTH, MAINTENANCE, DECLINE, AND MODIFIABILITY

2005 SPECIAL LECTURE BY K. WARNER SCHAIE AND SHERRY L. WILLIS

A JOINT PROGRAM OF

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY ON AGING

AND METLIFE FOUNDATION

Does intellectual ability change uniformly through-

out adulthood or are different patterns of ability

present over the lifespan? What accounts for indi-

vidual differences in age-related changes in cogni-

tive ability, especially in late life? Can cognitive

decline with increasing age be reversed by educa-

tional intervention? In this monograph, Dr. K.

Warner Schaie and Dr. Sherry L. Willis discuss their

findings from the Seattle Longitudinal Study, which

spans three generations and almost 50 years.

American Society on Aging 833 Market St., suite 511 San Francisco, CA 94105Phone: (415) 974-9600

Fax: (415) 974-0300E-mail: mindalert@asaging.org