Applied Learning and Aging. A Closer Look at Reading

Age-related changes differ across individuals, and some cognitive functions are primarily spared, whereas others show different trajectories of decline. Some changes attributed to aging result from disease, whereas others reflect cohort differences. Aging commonly brings losses of peripheral sensory functions critical to reading or listening-vision and hearing. With aging, time increases on tasks and the number of items immediately accessible in memory decreases. Reading is a complex, everyday activity. The great number of subsystems working together to form a cohesive understanding of extended discourse might be expected to create a substantial decrease in the processing speed and proficiency of older readers. The problem, however, comes when research attempts to isolate the relationship between reading and the declines resulting from aging. One of the reasons is that reading offers so many variables, such as topic interest, text length, text structure, readability, presentation method, and purpose.