Patterns of performance preservation and loss in healthy aging

Cognitive performance was studied in 67 healthy and highly educated men, ranging in age from 21 to 92 years old. Principal component analysis yielded five independent factors: Perceptual Reasoning, Visuospatial Memory and Organization, Verbal Fund of Knowledge, Verbal Discourse Memory, and Verbal Memory and Organization. The first two factors declined significantly (p < .05) with advancing age, whereas the other factors were not significantly correlated with advancing age. Further analysis indicates that Factor 1 explains all significant age related variance in neuropsychological performance. The data suggest that decline in visuospatial performance with age occurs even in the absence of disease and that memory functions are relatively well preserved in healthy individuals.