Understanding how and when cognitive change occurs over the life span is a prerequisite for understanding normal and abnormal development and aging. Most studies of cognitive change are constrained, however, in their ability to detect subtle, but theoretically informative life-span changes, as they rely on either comparing broad age groups or sparse sampling across the age range. Here, we present convergent evidence from 48,537 online participants and a comprehensive analysis of normative data from standardized IQ and memory tests. Our results reveal considerable heterogeneity in when cognitive abilities peak: Some abilities peak and begin to decline around high school graduation; some abilities plateau in early adulthood, beginning to decline in subjects’ 30s; and still others do not peak until subjects reach their 40s or later. These findings motivate a nuanced theory of maturation and age-related decline, in which multiple, dissociable factors differentially affect different domains of cognition.
ArdilaA. (2007). Normal aging increases cognitive heterogeneity: Analysis of dispersion in WAIS-III scores across age. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 22, 1003–1011.
2.
BaltesP. B. (1987). Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology, 23, 611–626.
3.
Baron-CohenS.WheelwrightS.HillJ. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241–251.
4.
BayleyN. (1970). Development of mental abilities. In MussenP. H. (Ed.), Carmichael’s manual of child psychology (3rd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 1163–1209). New York, NY: Wiley.
5.
CattellR. B. (1971). Abilities: Their structure, growth, and action. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
6.
DoppeltJ. E.WallaceW. L. (1955). Standardization of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale for older persons. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 51, 312–330.
7.
EngH. Y.ChenD.JiangY. (2005). Visual working memory for simple and complex visual stimuli. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 1127–1133.
8.
FlynnJ. (2007). What is intelligence?Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
9.
FlynnJ. (2010). Problems with IQ gains: The huge vocabulary gap. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 28, 412–433. doi:10.1177/0734282910373342
10.
FoxC.BirrenJ. E. (1949). Some factors affecting vocabulary size in later maturity: Age, education, and length of institutionalization. Journal of Gerontology, 4, 19–26.
11.
GathercoleS. E.AdamsA.-M.HitchG. J. (1994). Do young children rehearse? An individual-differences analysis. Memory & Cognition, 22, 201–207.
12.
GermineL.NakayamaK.DuchaineB. C.ChabrisC. F.ChatterjeeG.WilmerJ. B. (2012). Is the Web as good as the lab? Comparable performance from Web and lab in cognitive/perceptual experiments. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19, 847–857. doi:10.3758/s13423-012-0296-9
13.
GermineL. T.DuchaineB.NakayamaK. (2011). Where cognitive development and aging meet: Face learning ability peaks after age 30. Cognition, 118, 201–210. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.11.002
14.
GhislettaP.RabbitP.LunnM.LindenbergerU. (2012). Two thirds of the age-based changes in fluid and crystallized intelligence, perceptual speed, and memory in adulthood are shared. Intelligence, 40, 260–268.
15.
GohJ. O.AnY.ResnickS. M. (2012). Differential trajectories of age-related changes in components of executive and memory processes. Psychology and Aging, 27, 707–719.
16.
GreenwoodP. M. (2007). Functional plasticity in cognitive aging: Review and hypothesis. Neuropsychology, 21, 657–673.
17.
HalberdaJ.LyR.WilmerJ. B.NaimanD. Q.GermineL. (2012). Number sense across the lifespan as revealed by a massive Internet-based sample. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 109, 11116–11120. doi:10.1073/pnas.1200196109
18.
HampshireA.HighfieldR. R.ParkinB. L.OwenA. M. (2012). Fractionating human intelligence. Neuron, 76, 1225–1237. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2012.06.022
JohnsonW.LogieR. H.BrockmoleJ. R. (2010). Working memory tasks differ in factor structure across age cohorts: Implications for dedifferentiation. Intelligence, 38, 513–528. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2010.06.005
22.
KaufmanA. S. (2001). WAIS-III IQs, Horn’s theory, and generational changes from young adulthood to old age. Intelligence, 29, 131–167. doi:10.1016/S0160-2896(00)00046-5
23.
LeeH. F.GorsuchR. L.SaklofskeD. H.PattersonD. A. (2008). Cognitive differences for ages 16 to 89 years (Canadian WAIS-III). Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 26, 382–394.
24.
LogieR. H.MaylorE. A. (2009). An Internet study of prospective memory across adulthood. Psychology and Aging, 24, 767–774. doi:10.1037/a0015479
25.
MatarazzoJ. D. (1972). Wechsler’s measurement and appraisal of adult intelligence. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins.
26.
MeyersonP.TryonW. W. (2003). Validating Internet research: A test of the psychometric equivalence of Internet and in-person samples. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35, 614–620.
27.
MoranJ. M. (2013). Lifespan development: The effects of typical aging on theory of mind. Behavioral Brain Research, 237, 32–40.
28.
MurreJ. M. J.JanssenS. M. J.RouwR.MeeterM. (2013). The rise and fall of immediate and delayed memory for verbal and visuospatial information from late childhood to late adulthood. Acta Psychologica, 142, 96–107. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.10.005
29.
NisbettR. E.AronsonJ.BlairC.DickensW.FlynnJ.HalpernD. F.TurkheimerE. (2012). Intelligence: New findings and theoretical developments. American Psychologist, 67, 130–159.
30.
Open Science Collaboration. (2012). An open, large-scale, collaborative effort to estimate the reproducibility of psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 657–660.
31.
PausT. (2005). Mapping brain maturation and cognitive development during adolescence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 60–68.
32.
PhillipsW. A. (1974). On the distinction between sensory storage and short-term visual memory. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 283–290.
33.
SalthouseT. A. (2003). Memory and aging from 18 to 80. Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders, 17, 162–167.
34.
SalthouseT. A. (2004). What and when of cognitive aging. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 140–144.
35.
SchaieK. W. (2005). Developmental influences on adult intelligence: The Seattle Longitudinal Study. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
36.
ShakowD.GoldmanR. (1938). The effect of age on the Stanford-Binet vocabulary score of adults. Journal of Educational Psychology, 29, 241–256.
37.
SmithT. W.MarsdenP. V.HoutM. (2013). General Social Surveys, 1972-2012: Cumulative Codebook. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center.
38.
SorensonH. (1933). Mental ability over a wide range of adult ages. Journal of Applied Psychology, 17, 729–741.
39.
Tucker-DrobE. M. (2011). Global and domain-specific changes in cognition throughout adulthood. Developmental Psychology, 47, 331–343.
40.
WechslerD. (1997a). Technical manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Third Edition. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corp.
41.
WechslerD. (1997b). Technical manual for the Wechsler Memory Scale—Third Edition. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corp.
42.
WilmerJ.GermineL.ChabrisC.ChatterjeeG.GerbasiM.NakayamaK. (2012). Capturing specific abilities as a window into human individuality: The example of face recognition. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 29, 360–392.
43.
WisdomN. M.MignognaJ.CollinsR. L. (2012). Variability in Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV subtest performance across age. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 27, 389–397. doi:10.1093/arclin/acs041
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
