People keep their distinctive patterns of cognitive ability as they age: Longitudinal study allowed researchers to disconfirm the controversial hypothesis of "dedifferentiation;" cognitive skill levels do not appear to merge late in life
[7 September 2003 - American Psychological Association] Never good with numbers? The bad news: As you age, you may still not be good with them. The good news: You'll still be good at what you're good at today. New research reveals that, contrary to prior thinking, even the very old retain their distinctive patterns of cognitive strengths and weakness. The findings are published in the September issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, which is published by the American Psychological Association. The results of a large-scale, longitudinal study did not confirm popular but unproven theories of "dedifferentiation" -� that for any given person, varied cognitive skill levels start to merge late in life, perhaps due to brain changes. Anstey and her co-authors explain that the dedifferentiation hypothesis �- that individuals "differentiate" cognitively as they mature into adulthood, and then "de-differentiate" as they enter old age -- has a "long history in the fields of intelligence and individual differences, but has rarely been tested on a large, population-based sample of very old adults."