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AGE AND BEHAVIOR: LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE - EXPRESSING WHAT IS LEARNED

In studies of episodic memory, and in studies of learning, it is often concluded that learning ability declines in later life. This may not be true. It is true, however, that learning performances tend to be poorer in later life than during young adulthood. To understand this it must be recognized that a necessary distinction is made between learning as an internal process and performance as an external act. We see only the act and not the process; we infer that learning ability is poor when we observe only a little or no improvement in some performance. It is possible to be wrong about this inference because what may have made for the poor performance was not learning ability as such but the non-cognitive elements surrounding the act. The observer may not be aware of this. For example, only a small or no improvement in a task may be due to poor motivation or to a lack of confidence or to factors such as poor conditions in which the learning takes place. To the extent that we have information about such factors, we are more nearly likely to be correct in our inferences regarding the learning.
These non-cognitive factors are especially important in studies with the aged. Much of what in the past had been regarded as a deficiency in learning ability in later life has more recently been seen as a problem in the ability to express the learned information. In other words, much of what had been thought of as a deficiency in the internal cognitive process is now seen as a difficulty older people have in adapting to the task and in demonstrating what they know.
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