Cognitive development across the lifespan

"..The dis­tinc­tion between fluid and crys­tal­lized intel­li­gence is impor­tant because the two are influ­enced by dif­fer­ent fac­tors. While the for­mer is more bio­log­i­cally deter­mined and genet­i­cally pre­dis­posed, the lat­ter is shaped more by expe­ri­ence. This is a lit­tle bit sim­i­lar to what we know of sports: some peo­ple are more likely to develop stronger mus­cles than oth­ers, but this does not turn them auto­mat­i­cally into world-class ath­letes. Instead, they need many years of train­ing and expe­ri­ence to make it to the top. Like­wise, peo­ple need to apply their fluid intel­li­gence to a par­tic­u­lar domain of knowl­edge, such as physics or his­tory or neu­ro­science, to become really good at what they are doing…

Although fluid intel­li­gence does not get much bet­ter after matu­rity, and even starts to decline, crys­tal­lized intel­li­gence steadily con­tin­ues to get bet­ter and bet­ter for a long time. You can even do a lit­tle exper­i­ment to test this your­self: the next time you watch a game show like Who Wants to be a Mil­lion­aire together with your par­ents, write down who of you can cor­rectly answer most of the ques­tions. Likely, this will be your mom or dad, because of their higher lev­els of crys­tal­lized intel­li­gence (if this is the case, tell them they only won because of their "crys­tal­lized intel­li­gence" and they will be very impressed!). Then, ask your par­ents to play a tile match­ing video game like Tetris with you. With just a lit­tle bit of prac­tice, you will prob­a­bly become as good as, or even bet­ter than, your par­ents, because this game depends less on crys­tal­lized than on fluid intelligence…

As you can see, cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties develop quickly in early ages but then slowly start to decline. In con­trast, crys­tal­lized intel­li­gence devel­ops much more slowly but also suf­fers from a lesser decline later on."

Category(s):Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Source material from SharpBrains