Philip D. Harvey, PhD Leonard M. Miller Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Miami, Florida
Vanessa Nascimento, MD, MPH PGY-1 Psychiatry Resident University of Miami/Jackson Health System Psychiatry Residency Training Program Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Miami, Florida
Disclosures Dr. Harvey has received consulting fees or travel reimbursements from Alkermes, Bio Excel, Boehringer Ingelheim, Intra-Cellular Therapies, Mindstrong Health, Minerva Pharma, Regeneron Pharma, Roche Pharma, Sunovion Pharma, Takeda Pharma, and Teva. He receives royalties from the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia. He is Chief Scientific Officer of i-Function, Inc. He has research grants from Takeda and the Stanley Medical Research Foundation. Dr. Nascimento reports no financial relationships with any companies whose products are mentioned in this article, or with manufacturers of competing products.
On the other hand, some cognitive abilities do not decline with aging. These include previously acquired knowledge, such as vocabulary and mathematics skills, as well as factual information, such as academic information and the faces of familiar people. These are referred to as “crystallized intelligence,” and there is limited evidence that they decline with age. In fact, these abilities do not decline until the moderately severe stage of cortical dementias, and are commonly used to index premorbid cognitive functioning and cognitive reserve.
Why is this distinction between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence important? As noted above, many older people do not have early-life experience with technology. Thus, their crystallized intelligence, which is not as vulnerable to decline with aging, does not include information about how to perform many technological tasks. In contrast to today’s adolescents and young adults, older adults’ academic history typically does not include using smartphones, doing homework via Google Docs, or having homework and classwork assigned via the internet.
Learning how to use new technology requires fluid intelligence, and these abilities are less efficient in older adults. So for many older people, technological tasks can be complex and unfamiliar, and the skills needed to learn how to perform them are also more limited, even in comparison to older adults’ own ability when younger. Because many technology-based activities require concurrent performance of multiple tasks, older adults are at a disadvantage.4 It is not surprising, therefore, that a subset of older adults rate their technology skills as weak, and technology-based tasks as challenging or anxiety-provoking.
However, studies show most older adults’ attitudes toward technology remain largely positive, and that they are capable of attaining the necessary skills to use information and communication technology.4,5 An individual’s perception of his/her age, age-related beliefs, and self-efficacy are associated not only with attitudes toward technology, but possibly with cognition itself.6
Education level and socioeconomic factors also influence a person’s ability to become proficient in using technology.7-9 In fact, socioeconomic factors are more strongly related to access to the internet than age. Many older adults have internet access, but this access does not always translate into full use of its services.
