CHANGES IN COGNITIVE PROCESSING IN OLDER ADULTS: deficits or adaptive strategies?

• Autor(a) principal: Fonseca, Rochele Paz
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Outros Autores: Ska, Bernadette, Scherer, Lilian Cristine, de Oliveira, Camila Rosa, Parente, Maria Alice de Mattos Pimenta, Joanette, Yves
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Estudos Interdisciplinares sobre o Envelhecimento
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/RevEnvelhecer/article/view/6728
• topic: Envelhecimento; Cognição; Estratégias adaptativas

This theoretical article aims to discuss the nature of the cognitive changes emerged from healthy aging, searching for answers to the following question “Do the changes in elderly adults’ cognition represent deficits?” Normal aging is accompanied by changes in cognitive functioning. The most frequent changes encompass some memory, attention and visuo-spatial components. These changes are modulated by the cognitive reserves possessed by individuals and by the way these individuals continue to maintain and explore them. Due to brain plasticity, adaptations continue to occur as to maintain the same level of cognitive processing. These adaptations tend to be considered as evidence of cognitive decline, representing a negative connotation brought by chronological development. They may as well be understood as an index of cognitive strategies’ application, which corresponds to a non-pejorative developmental notion. After a critical-reflexive analysis of the literature, the initial question about the adaptive or deficits characteristic of the cognitive changes emerging from aging seems to point to an answer against the notion that all changes in cognition represent a deficit. Thus, the concept of the occurrence of strategies’ adaptations to maintain cognitive processing is reinforced.