Adult Cognition

1 Age and Its Research Significance.- Professional Achievement.- Industrial Work Performance.- Automobile Driving.- An Important Cautionary Note.- Functional Age.- Summary.- 2 Methodological Issues.- Traditional Research Designs.- Environmental Change Effects.- A Research Design Sensitive to Environmental Change.- Internal and External Validity.- Problems with Selection of Research Participants.- Attempts to Artificially "Equate" Age Groups.- Health.- Concluding with an Optimistic Perspective.- Summary.- 3 Theoretical Considerations.- Difficulties of Theorizing in Adult Development.- Replacing the Age Variable.- Dimensions for Theory Classification.- Two Illustrative Theories.- Forewarning.- Age Defined by Theory.- Summary.- 4 Psychometric Intelligence.- Definition of Intelligence.- Analysis of Component Abilities.- Characterizing the Differential Decline.- Issues of Controversy.- Theoretical Evaluation.- Summary.- 5 Decision Making and Problem Solving.- Creativity.- Flexibility.- Organizational Skills.- Ability to Make Logical Deductions.- Ability to Discriminate Relevant from Irrelevant Information.- Concrete and Abstract Thinking.- Ability to Proceed Systematically towards a Problem Solution.- Miscellaneous Factors.- Cognitive Regression.- The Critical Role of Experience.- Theoretical Evaluation.- Summary.- 6 Comprehension and Use of Information.- Comprehension.- Structural Characteristics of Semantic Memory.- Rates of Information Activation.- Metamemory.- Remote Memory.- Theoretical Evaluation.- Summary.- 7 Acquisition and Retention.- Localizing the Loss.- Theoretical Evaluation.- Summary.- 8 Stimulus Registration and Interpretation.- Spatial Aspects of Perception.- Temporal Aspects of Perception.- Visual Sensitivity.- Theoretical Evaluation.- Summary.- 9 Attentional Capacity and Processing Resources.- History of the Capacity Concept.- Usages of the Capacity Concept.- Processing Rate as an Alternative to Capacity.- Theoretical Evaluation.- Summary.- 10 Speculations and Implications.- Five Major Age Trends.- Practical Significance.- Prospects for Functional Age Measurement.- Theoretical Assessment.- Summary.- References.- Author Index.