The Role of Experience in Cognitive Aging

A major theme of this chapter has been that specific experience is an extremely important variable moderating human performance and one that should be considered when attempting to examine any type of individual differences in behavior. It is possible that differential experience is responsible for the distinct age trends evident in process, or fluid, as opposed to product, or crystallized, aspects of cognitive functioning; and it is certainly the case that level of experience is an important consideration in attempting to generalize from laboratory situations to real world activities. Research has convincingly demonstrated that adults of all ages benefit from experience; thus, comparisons of experienced older adults with inexperienced young adults will probably favor the former in many situations. The mechanisms responsible for improvement associated with experience are still not known--particularly whether or not they are the same as those involved in the decline in performance associated with increased age--but a promising new approach, the Molar Equivalence-Molecular Decomposition Strategy, may eventually provide answers to this question. And finally, the evidence still appears inconclusive on the issue of whether differential experience is a causal factor in the age differences in cognitive functioning.