Many cognitive processes in the brain decline when we stop using them, confirming the broad thrust of the lifelong learning concept. Instead of the proverbial “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” the message is instead “use it or lose it”, raising the further question of how best this should be done.
Although our brain is flexible enough to permit learning throughout life, there is a general decline in most cognitive capacities from around age 20 to 80. The everyday impression is that the decline starts much later than at 20 years, simply because it becomes more noticeable during late adulthood.
The losses of executive function and longterm memory in middle-aged adults may also not be too apparent to the individual because they are offset by increases in expertise and skill (Park et al., 2001).
Much remains to be understood, however, about the interaction between increasing knowledge and declining executive function and memory across the lifespan so that further research is needed in this area.
Not all cognitive functions decline with age in the same way. The decline has been most clearly noted in tasks such as letter comparison, pattern comparison, letter rotation, computation span, reading span, cued recall, free recall, and so on. By contrast, increases in cognitive capacities across the lifespan up to age 70 (with some declines by age 80) have also been noted.
This is the case for vocabulary, for example, which manifests an increase in experience and general knowledge counterbalancing losses in other cognitive capacities (Park et al., 2001; Tisserand et al., 2001; 2002).
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