How aging affects focus
Aging, just as you may not run as fast or jump as high as you did as a teenager, your brain’s cognitive power—that is, your ability to learn, remember, and solve problems—slows down with age.
The brain controls many aspects of thinking — remembering, planning and organizing, making decisions, and much more.
These cognitive abilities affect how well we do everyday tasks and whether we can live independently.
Some changes in thinking are common as people get older. For example, older adults may:
- Be slower to find words and recall names
- Find they have more problems with multitasking
- Experience mild decreases in the ability to pay attention
Changes in the Aging Brain
As a person gets older, changes occur in all parts of the body, including the brain.
- Certain parts of the brain shrink, especially those important to learning and other complex mental activities.
- In certain brain regions, communication between neurons (nerve cells) may not be as effective.
- Blood flow in the brain may decrease.
- Inflammation, which occurs when the body responds to an injury or disease, may increase.
6 Ways that Memory and Thinking Change With Aging
People often think of memory when they think of cognition or “brain function.” But there’s actually much more to thinking and the brain’s work.
Here are six key ways that cognition changes with aging.
1. Processing speed
What it is: This refers to how quickly the brain can process information and then provide a response however making a movement or providing an answer.
Processing speed affects just about every function in the brain.
Processing speed in of itself is not a specific mental task, it’s about how quickly you can manage a mental task.
2. Memory
What it is: This is a broad category covering the ability to remember information. Key sub-types include:
Working memory
- This refers to the ability to temporarily hold information in mind and manipulate it mentally, like remembering a new phone number and then dialing it.
- Working memory is involved in a variety of mental tasks, including problem-solving, making decisions, and processing language.
It’s also technically a different task for the brain to create a memory (this is sometimes called encoding) versus to retrieve it.
In other words a person may have trouble remembering something however difficult encoding it in the first place, or because they are having difficulty promptly retrieving it.
3. Attention
- What it is: Attention is the ability to concentrate and focus on something specific, so that the related information can be processed.
How it changes with aging. Some aspects of attention do get worse with aging. Specifically:
- Selective attention gets worse with aging.
- Divided attention gets worse with aging.
- Sustained attention does not tend to get worse with aging.
Practical implications:
- As people get older, they are more easily distracted by noise, visual clutter, or a busy situation. It requires more effort for them to pay attention, especially when other things are going on.
- People will also get worse at multi-tasking or switching between tasks, as they get older.
4. Language Skills
What they are: Language skills cover a variety of abilities related to understanding however producing both verbal language and written language.
How they change with aging:
- Vocabulary tends to remain stable with aging.
- The comprehension of written language tends to remain stable.
- Speech comprehension can decline with age, especially if the older person has any hearing difficulties or if the speech is rapid or distorted (because such speech requires more mental processing).
Practical implications:
- Normal older adults retain their vocabulary and ability to comprehend written language.
- They may struggle with understanding rapid speech or distorted speech (such as that broadcast by a loudspeaker or synthetic voice).
- Retrieving words often takes longer.
5. Executive Functioning
What it is: This refers to the mental skills that are needed for activities related to planning, organizing, problem-solving, abstract thinking, mental flexibility, and appropriate behavior. Therefore executive function allows people to do things such as:
- Solve new problems
- Organize information and plan activities
- Think abstractly
- Use reason (especially when it comes to reasoning with unfamiliar material)
- Adapt to new situations
- Behave in socially appropriate ways
- Make complex decisions
Practical implications:
- Normal older adults generally can perform the executive functioning tasks listed above, but they will not do them as well as when they were younger.
- Older adults may struggle or take more time for more demanding executive functioning tasks, especially if they are tired or otherwise cognitively feeling taxed.
6. Emotional Processing
What it is: This refers to the ways one processes and regulates emotions, especially the negative ones. Examples include:
- How quickly one moves out of a negative emotional state
- How physically or emotionally reactive one is to interpersonal stressors
- Mental strategies for minimizing negative stimuli, such as paying less attention to them
How it changes with aging: Older adults experience several changes that generally make them more positive and optimistic. These include:
- Paying less attention to or withdrawing from negatively-simulating situations.
- Paying more attention to positive things.
- Becoming better at remembering positive things.
Practical implications:
- Normal older adults develop a positivity bias, and will tend to pay more attention to situations that are emotionally positive.
- Older adults have more difficulty remembering or paying attention to situations or problems that generate negative emotions.
- This may be part of why it’s difficult for them to engage in planning for unpleasant future eventualities.
- People tend to get happier and recover from negative emotions more quickly as they age.
- Older adults may seem to avoid or deny certain issues that they find unpleasant.
