Reviewed research with the Twenty Questions Task aimed at investigating problem solving across the life span. Research indicates use of an efficient problem-solving strategy increases during childhood and then decreases again during the later adult years. Elderly adults' performance was facilitated when the necessity of using an efficient strategy…

Fifth graders, ninth graders, college students, and persons over age sixty-five were given pencil-and-paper tasks in spatial development. Discusses results in terms of ecological validity, experience, and number of competing cues to be processed simultaneously. Used Piaget's formulation on adult cognitive development to explain elderly's…

Participants aged 17-26, 39-51 and 59-76 solved concept problems to investigate intellectual correlates of concept identification as a function of stage of learning in adulthood. Differential ability-performance relations as a function of stage of learning were considerably less potent in the elderly v the young and middle aged. (Author)