THE INFLUENCE OF AGE AND FITNESS ON PERFORMANCE AND LEARNING 699

Abstract

As a group, older adults perform as well as younger adults on tasks that assess crystalized intelligence (CI), yet there is a negative effect for age on tasks that assess fluid intelligence (FI). It is important to note, however, that the negative impact of age on FI does not hold for all individuals. It has been suggested that physical fitness may be an important variable in explaining these individual differences. The primary purpose of this study was to examine performance on FI and CI tasks as a function of age and fitness. A secondary purpose was to examine the influence of age and fitness on the beneficial effects that practice has on performance and retention. Fitness was assessed in 41 older (60-80 yrs) and 42 younger (20-30 yrs) adults who were then randomly assigned to either experimental or control conditions. Participants performed repeated trials on two cognitive tasks during acquisition and retention with the experimental group practicing for 100 trials and the control group practicing for 20 trials. Results showed that older participants performed better than younger participants on the CI task: however, younger participants performed better than older participants on the FI task. Fitness influenced the results on the FI task such that older fit participants performed better than older unfit participants. As predicted, learning did not occur on the CI task. However, learning did occur on the FI task and differed as a function of age and fitness. Older unfit participants did not retain as much as older fit participants who were indistinguishable from younger fit participants. It is concluded that physical fitness may serve as a buffer to the normal age-related declines in cognitive function and in learning.