Which cognitive ability is more affected in normal aging?

Memory decline is one of the social stereotypes of the old age. While it is certainly true that memory problems may arise, the decline of memory is not necessarily the steepest compared to other forms of fluid intelligence (e.g., reasoning and executive functions). The current study aims to compare the degree of impact of aging on a wide range of cognitive abilities. 111 participants aged from 18 to 81 were recruited to complete a cognitive battery comprising Synonym tests in both Chinese and English (i.e., Shipley), Sentence Completion, Raven’s SPM, Stroop, digit span forward, Hong Kong List Learning Test, one-back, Tower of Hanoi, operation span, and trail making tests (number and mixture). Consistent with the earlier research, the cognitive performance generally became worse except for the synonym tasks, which remained stable or even improved. Comparisons across domains based on z-scores showed that the performance in the Tower of Hanoi, trail-making (mixture), and Raven’s SPM showed the steepest rates of decline (Figure 1), indicating that aging has more impact on executive functions. The results of this study provide some useful information for researchers who investigate the cognitive training designed to mitigate the effects of aging on cognition. Acknowledgment: This work was supported by HKRGC-GRF 15601718 awarded to WSW.