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The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 63:P235-P240 (2008)
© 2008 The Gerontological Society of America


RESEARCH ARTICLE

Age and Ability Affect Practice Gains in Longitudinal Studies of Cognitive Change

Patrick Rabbitt, Mary Lunn, Danny Wong and Mark Cobain

1 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, England, and University of West Australia
2 Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, England.
3 Department of Research and Development, Unilever PLC, London, England.

During a 20-year longitudinal study, 5,842 participants aged 49 to 93 years significantly improved over two to four successive experiences of the Heim AH4-1 intelligence test (first published in 1970), even with between-test intervals of 4 years and longer. After we considered significant attrition by death and dropout and the effects of gender, socioeconomic advantage, and recruitment cohort, we found that participants with high intelligence test scores showed greater improvement than did those with lower intelligence test scores. Practice gains also reduced with age, even after we took into consideration the individual differences in intelligence test scores. This emphasizes the methodological point that neglect of individual differences in improvement during longitudinal studies underestimates age-related changes in younger and more able participants and the theoretical point that, like all experiences during everyday life, participation in longitudinal studies alters the ability of aging humans to cope with cognitive demands to different extents according to their baseline abilities.

Key Words: Cognitive gain • Longitudinal study • Practice gains







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Copyright © 2008 by The Gerontological Society of America.