THE INFLUENCE OF AGE AND FITNESS ON PERFORMANCE
AND LEARNING
JENNIFER L. ETNIER AND DANIEL M. LANDERS
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
As a group, older adults perform as well as younger adults on tasks that
assess crystallized intelligence (CI), yet there is a negative effect for
age on tasks that assess fluid intelligence (FI). It is important
to note, however, that the negative impact of age on FI does not hold for
all individuals. It has been suggested that physical fitness may
be an important variable in explaining these individual differences.
The primary purpose of this study was to examine performance on FI and
CI tasks as a function of age and fitness. A secondary purpose of
this study was to examine the influence of age and fitness on the beneficial
effects that practice has on performance and retention. Fitness was
assessed in 41 older (60-80 yrs) and 42 younger (20-30 yrs) adults who
were then randomly assigned to either experimental or control conditions.
Participants performed repeated trials on two cognitive tasks during acquisition
and retention with the experimental group practicing 100 trials and the
control group practicing 20 trials. Results showed that older participants
performed better than younger participants on the CI task; however, younger
participants performed better than older participants on the FI task.
Fitness influenced the results on the FI task such that older fit participants
performed better than older unfit participants. As predicted, learning
did not occur on the CI task. However, learning did occur on the
FI task and differed as a function age and fitness. Older unfit participants
did not retain as much as older fit participants who were indistinguishable
from younger fit participants. It is concluded that physical fitness
may serve as a buffer to the normal age-related declines in cognitive functioning
and in learning.
This abstract appears in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise,
29(5), May 1997 Supplement, S122.