Woody Allen once said, "You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred." (Levin, 2011). Senator John Glenn, who happened to be the oldest person on board a U.S space shuttle, demonstrated that age could not define us. Brain function determines our emotion, feeling; define our personality and our intellectual capability. But as individual approach their late age, they physically and cognitively change in countless ways. This paper illustrates the research evidence of changes in the cognitive functioning in older adults and how these changes affect the job performance of these individuals.
Working Memory
Working memory has been widely considered as the primary cause of aging-related shortfalls in many cognitive activities such as decision making. (Craik " Salthouse, 2011) In fact, many of the theories explaining cognitive aging attribute it to reduced working memory. According to Diamond (2013), working memory is a system in the brain that actively manipulates information that is currently being preserved for immediate attention. On the other hand, primary memory involves protecting perceived data for a shorter period. The reorganization of the information in the primary memory involves working memory which shows deficiencies with age. This finding implies that the primary function of working memory is divided attention. Hence, the attention deficits with an increase in period suggest that older Adults have impaired working memory. Although these general findings suggest that working memory is impaired in adult, there is no elaborate finding of the mechanisms involved; much of research has concentrated on testing various factor which affect how the working memory function. These factors include:
o Attention resources
o Speed informational processing
o Inhibitory control
(a) Attention resources
Whitbourne, (2015) suggested that there is a relationship between the decline in an attentional resource and old age. These affect the cognitive tasks which highly depend on effort input. In Human movement, paying attention plays a vital role, particularly in a complicated situation. Research has shown that attentional resources are highly required in an older adult when down is warding a staircase. This explains why chances of falling off the stairs in high in older adults.
(b) The speed of Information Processing
Cognitive tasks and other factors related to aging working memory can be expounded in term of general decelerating of information processing. There may be adverse effects on more multifaceted functions due to the slowing of the basic cognitive procedure. Slowing of data processing may contribute to a more significant extent the aging-related inconsistency in a range of cognitive tasks as well as long-term memory.
(c) Inhibitory Control
Cognitive shortfalls brought about by aging are attributed to the absence of inhibitory control. The inability to reduce inappropriate data in working memory may efficiently decrease its ability hence hampering access to vital information. In tasks that require vigorous manipulation, reorganization or incorporation of information in working memory; there are manifestations of substantial deficits in function among older adults.
Speech and Language
Older adult exhibits an entire language and speech processing under normal conditions, though the time taken to process is slower compared to young adults. Older adults frequently narrate well-articulated dialogues that are perceived by the parties involved to be stimulating than those of young adults. They are skillful communicators with wide-ranging vocabularies and have few hitches in processing continuing speech. However, some older person has hearing impairment hence in a dialogue scenery will be required to interpret a weak sound gesture. This may negatively affect other cognitive processes and lessen the functional capability of working memory. Older adults also face problems with grasping of information when one by one word is offered at a very high rate, but they are a significant reduction in impairment when such word form expressive sentences. Hence in old age, they can maintain good language skills.
Decision Making
Research conducted has shown that there is a high relationship between working memory constraint on the capacity to formulate decision and possible effects of attention (Braver " West, 2008). In real life situation, integrated concepts such as enthusiasm, relevance, and prior information are vital moderators to those effects. A recent finding has shown that when older people are making a decision, they tend to rely no on expert knowledge or previous information regarding the situation. On the other hand, young adult tends to build more and sample on recent news. The young also manage to evaluate more alternatives before concluding. Due to working memory limitations, older people heavily rely more on expert than young people. This may reasonably work well in case the expert is well acquitted but may lead to other shortfalls such as investment scams. Poor decision making in older adult may also be attributed to memory loss or decline
Vision
According to Polat et al. (2012), ability to perform daily activities is connected to sensory functioning. In the late adult, vision is greatly reduced (Polat et al., 2012). When they are moving from well-lighted areas to one which is poorly or no light at all, the eyes are unable to adjust quickly. Though is there other factors that affect vision in the older adult, research has shown that disease that is associated with older age such an as macular degeneration, glaucoma has primarily contributed to poor vision. Cataract affects the lens of the eyes making vision became cloudy and distorted. According to Scialfa " Kline (2007), another detect that impair vision is degeneration of glaucoma. The diseases affect the macula of the retina, making the image to be formed away from the visual field. These diseases are making driving at night difficult since the affected person is not able to detect how close or fares an object is (West et al. 2010).
Touch and Pain
(Kemp et.al. 2014) suggested that the sense of touching and pain is also affected by age. (Molton " Terrill, 2014) Found out that a larger percentage of about 60-75 percent of older person experience persistent pain. Most of these older adults complain of back pain, which accounts for forty percent, joint pain, account for 15-25 percent and neuropathic pain which accounted for about 35 percent (Denard " others, 2010). (Tsang " et.al. 2008) Also found that as a person became older, the presence of pain also increases than when they are young. There also found out that female have reported a higher number compared to male.
Physical change and appearance
Physical changes and appearance start to be more produced in older person. The most visible variations are wrinkles and age spot. (Hoyer " Roodin, 2009) found out that as human being became older, they became shorter due to bone loss in their spines. A recent finding by Crane, Macneil, " Tamopsolsky (2013) found out that exercise such as aerobic, increase muscle strength in adult who are between 65 years to 80 years. This finding was backed by more discoveries by Rejeski et.al (2011) also said that physical activity and managing one’s weight helped in preserving mobility in late adults. Compare to young adults, older person moves slowing, this slowing movement happens in all type of movement. This difficulty in movement general body sluggishness was attributed by obesity (Murphy " others, 2014; Vincent, Raiser, " Vincent, 2012).
How Changes in Cognitive Functioning Affect the Production of Older Adults At Work.
Change in brain function of individual more so the older adult either positively or negatively. At a workstation, these changes affect the productivity of that individual in some way. Some of the challenges experience includes;
(a) Loss of attention
Attention is an essential aspect of cognitive aging (Pierce " Andersen, 2014; Sylvain-Roy, Lungu, " Belleville, 2014). Attention involves concentrating on the particular part of experience while paying no attention to those that are irrelevant. This depreciates in older person compare to a younger person (Ben-David et al., 2013; Quigley " Muller, 2014). However, this can be improved through the substantial reduction of distractors and improved alertness. (Maya et al., 2014). In work setting, an older individual tends to be slow in executing the task, the work is prone to error, and often their poor make decision.
(b) Loss of hearing
Loss of hearing ability prevents older persons from engaging with social interaction and in conversation with others.
(c) Visual impairment
Also, visual impairment inhibits the movement of the older person. According to (West et al. 2010), an elder adult is unable to drive at night since there cannot tend how close or far a vehicle is. Poor vision also hinders them from undertaking tasks which there are more suited to and competent at.
Conclusion
The decline of cognitive is not inevitable. The most compelling aged related cognitive is its variability. In some older adults, the cognitive functioning is well retained even if the late 70’ and 80’. In some cases, there even perform better compared to a young adult. Aged connected cognitive degeneration is best understood using a range of mechanisms such as speed, working memory, physical change and appearance, sensitivity to pain and touch, hearing and visual impairment. The degree of cognitive decline varies in a different individual. Cognitive changes such as memory loss, hearing and vision impairment affect one’s productivity at work. The evidence presented does not clearly show how aging directly affect the decline in cognitive functioning.
References
Glisky, E. L. (2007). Changes in cognitive function in human aging. Brain aging: Models, methods, and mechanisms, 3-20.
Salthouse, T. (2012). Consequences of age-related cognitive declines. Annual review of psychology, 63, 201-226.
Trafton, J. G., " Monk, C. A. (2007). Task interruptions. Reviews of human factors and ergonomics, 3(1), 111-126.
Craik, F. I., " Salthouse, T. A. (Eds.). (2011). The handbook of aging and cognition. Psychology Press.
Braver, T. S., " West, R. (2008). Working memory, executive control, and aging. The handbook of aging and cognition, 3, 311-372.
