Cognitive and neuroscientific perspectives of healthy ageing.

With dementia incidence projected to escalate significantly within the next 25 years, the United Nations declared 2021-2030 the Decade of Healthy Ageing, emphasising cognition as a crucial element. As a leading discipline in cognition and ageing research, psychology is well-equipped to offer insights for translational research, clinical practice, and policy-making. In this comprehensive review, we discuss the current state of knowledge on age-related changes in cognition and psychological health. We discuss cognitive changes during ageing, including (a) heterogeneity in the rate, trajectory, and characteristics of decline experienced by older adults, (b) the role of cognitive reserve in age-related cognitive decline, and (c) the potential for cognitive training to slow this decline. We also examine ageing and cognition through multiple theoretical perspectives. We highlight critical unresolved issues, such as the disparate implications of subjective versus objective measures of cognitive decline and the insufficient evaluation of cognitive training programs. We suggest future research directions, and emphasise interdisciplinary collaboration to create a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that modulate cognitive ageing.

Attaining Automaticity in the Visual Numerosity Task is Not Automatic.

This experiment is a replication of experiments reported by Lassaline and Logan (1993) using the visual numerosity task. The aim was to replicate the transition from controlled to automatic processing reported by Lassaline and Logan (1993), and to examine the extent to which this result, reported with average group results, can be observed in the results of individuals within a group. The group results in this experiment did replicate those reported by Lassaline and Logan (1993); however, one half of the sample did not attain automaticity with the task, and one-third did not exhibit a transition from controlled to automatic processing. These results raise questions about the pervasiveness of automaticity, and the interpretation of group means when examining cognitive processes.