TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - A strong link between speed of visual discrimination and cognitive ageing
JO  - Current biology
A1  - Ritchie, Stuart J.
A1  - Tucker-Drob, Elliot M.
A1  - Deary, Ian J.
SP  - R681
EP  - R683
VL  - 24
IS  - 15
N2  - Attempts to explain people's differences in intelligence and cognitive ageing often hypothesize that they are founded substantially upon differences in speed of information processing [1]. To date, there are no studies that fulfill the design criteria necessary to test this idea, namely: having a large sample size; being sufficiently longitudinal; and using measures of processing efficiency that have a tractable biological basis, are grounded in theory, and are not themselves complex or based on motor response speed. We measured visual 'inspection time', a psychophysical indicator of the efficiency of the early stages of perceptual processing [2], in a large (n = 628 with full data), narrow-age sample at mean ages 70, 73, and 76 years. We included concurrent tests of intelligence. A latent growth curve model assessed the extent to which inspection time change is coupled with change in intelligence. <br><br>RESULTS showed a moderate correlation (r = 0.460) between inspection time performance and intelligence, and a strong correlation between change in inspection time and change in intelligence from 70 to 76 (r = 0.779). These results support the processing speed theory of cognitive ageing. They go beyond cross-sectional correlation to show that cognitive change is accompanied by changes in basic visual information processing as we age.<p/>  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0960-9822
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.06.012
ID  - ref1
ER  -