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. 2015 Apr;26(4):433-43.
doi: 10.1177/0956797614567339. Epub 2015 Mar 13.

When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span

Joshua K Hartshorne  1 , Laura T Germine  2
Affiliations

When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span

Joshua K Hartshorne et al. Psychol Sci. 2015 Apr.

Abstract

Understanding how and when cognitive change occurs over the life span is a prerequisite for understanding normal and abnormal development and aging. Most studies of cognitive change are constrained, however, in their ability to detect subtle, but theoretically informative life-span changes, as they rely on either comparing broad age groups or sparse sampling across the age range. Here, we present convergent evidence from 48,537 online participants and a comprehensive analysis of normative data from standardized IQ and memory tests. Our results reveal considerable heterogeneity in when cognitive abilities peak: Some abilities peak and begin to decline around high school graduation; some abilities plateau in early adulthood, beginning to decline in subjects' 30s; and still others do not peak until subjects reach their 40s or later. These findings motivate a nuanced theory of maturation and age-related decline, in which multiple, dissociable factors differentially affect different domains of cognition.

Keywords: cognitive ability; cognitive development; individual differences; intelligence; language development.

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Conflict of interest statement

Author Information. Raw data are available from the authors. The authors have no competing financial interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Bootstrapped age of peak performance for WAIS-III and WMS-III tasks (Exp. 1)
Represented are the medians (central line), inter-quartile ranges (boxes) and 95% confidence intervals (whiskers). WM = Working Memory (immediate test after each trial); STM = Short-Term Memory (test soon after stimulus presentation); LTM = Long-Term Memory (test 20–30 min. after stimulus presentation).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Lifespan curves for representative early- and late-peaking WAIS-III and WMS-III tasks (Exp. 1). Shaded areas represent standard errors.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Results of Exps. 2 & 3
Panel A: Mean z-scored performance for each task in Exp. 2. Shaded regions represent SEs. Panel B: Mean z-scored performance in Exp. 3. Panel C: Bootstrapped age of peak performance for Exps. 1–2, plus replications.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Lifespan curves for vocabulary for participants tested in 1974–1987 (Panel A), 1988–1997 (Panel B), and 1998–2012 (Panel C). Estimated age-of-peak-performance is shown in Panel D, and mean score for each cohort is shown in Panel E.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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