Age Changes in the Factor Structure of Intellectual Abilities in Adulthood and Old Age

The purpose of this research was to investigate the stability of the factor structure of intellectual abilities across the adult life-span. Army Alpha longitudinal data on the same 96 males tested in 1919, 1950, and 1960 were analyzed in addition to data on 123 undergraduates tested in 1972-4. Various longitudinal and time-lag simultaneous group factor analyses using the maximum likelihood approach suggested that the factor structure was changing with age. This variability was most pronounced in the 60 year old group. Time-lag comparisons between young adults in 1919 and young adults in the 1970’s showed considerable stability. In particular, a simultaneous analysis indicated that a model constraining both factor loadings and factor intercorrelations to be equal across groups was tenable. This result suggested considerable stability of structure within young adults over time. The results also suggest that traditional factor analytic taxonomies developed in the context of young adulthood may not represent suitable and adequate descriptions of the intellectual functioning of elderly persons. Such findings also

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