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AGE AND BEHAVIOR: THE ABILITY TO SOLVE PROBLEMS

While the ability to solve problems depends upon a variety of cognitive abilities, in themselves these abilities are not sufficient to insure success. Other factors are involved in problem solving too. Some evidence, but not all, suggests that elderly people have greater difficulty than younger people in solving laboratory problems, largely because these problems require abstract thought. Older adults prefer the more concrete tasks and work in more concrete fashion than younger adults. Education plays a role in the preference for the concrete such that the greater the education of the older person, the less the tendency to prefer and to think in concrete terms. Some evidence also suggests that people who are very superior intellectually, and who can solve very difficult problems, show no age decline until relatively later in life—not before age 70.
Problem-solving ability can be impaired when there is rigidity or inflexibility of thought. To solve problems it is often necessary to be flexible in going from one type of thought to another. The literature is conflicting as to whether rigidity underlies the difficulty older people have in solving problems. In many of life's situations, this ability to shift from one type of problem to another is taxed most when there is both information indicating a correct direction to take and when there is information indicating what direction not to take. The former is called a positive instance and the latter a negative instance. When both positive and negative instances are part of the same problem, and the relevant instance is left unspecified, the older person appears to be at a special loss.
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