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LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF INTELLIGENCE: THE SIXTEENTH YEAR IN “OPERATION RETIREMENT”
Author(s) -
Harwood Elsie,
Enticknap L. E.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
australian journal on ageing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-6612
pISSN - 0726-4240
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-6612.1984.tb00944.x
Subject(s) - wechsler adult intelligence scale , demography , age groups , longitudinal study , intelligence quotient , test (biology) , psychology , gerontology , medicine , cognition , psychiatry , paleontology , pathology , sociology , biology
The serial testing of intelligence in a panel of 405 persons over the age of sixty was commenced in 1966. Analysis of 155 completed progressive scores (WAIS (l), NHAIS (l), WAIS (2), NHAIS (2) obtained over ten years) was reported in 1976. A surviving group of 118 (average age 80) has been re‐tested (WAIS (3)) in 1981. Twenty were then aged between 85 and 95. The 1981 scores have been analyzed by their age‐groups at commencement of the study (60–64, 65–69, 70–74, 75–79). The longitudinal changes have been tested statistically, and show that for all age‐groups (as reported of the larger number in 1976) the average yearly change in the first four tests was negligible until the ninth and tenth decades, when it reached approximately two percent per annum; but that in all groups (regardless of age at commencement) the decline was more marked in the past five years. As before, there was wide variation within age‐groups — some in their eighties actually improving over sixteen years. More detailed analysis of differences between verbal and perceptual abilities will be discussed; and it will be shown that, in the UQOR test, score differences between 1977 and 1981 proved to be unrelated to age.