Successful aging: The role of cognitive gerontology
DOI: 10.1080/0361073x.2017.1398849
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Summary
This commentary examines the relationship between the construct of "successful aging" and cognitive gerontology, the experimental psychology of human aging. The authors address the central question of what contributions cognitive gerontology can or should make to understanding, defining, and assessing successful aging. They argue that standards for successful aging are fundamentally prescriptive value judgments rooted in cultural and historical contexts, serving primarily as tools for social policy and intervention. In contrast, cognitive gerontology is primarily descriptive, focusing on characterizing age-related changes in cognitive function. Consequently, the authors contend that cognitive gerontology has little to contribute to setting the normative standards for successful aging but plays a critical role in assessment and intervention evaluation. The paper utilizes a narrative review of existing literature to analyze conceptualizations of successful aging, such as the Rowe and Kahn model, and to evaluate the efficacy of various cognitive interventions. The authors categorize interventions into four types: learning (improvement through practice), near transfer (benefits within the same cognitive domain), far transfer (benefits across different cognitive domains), and very far transfer (cognitive benefits from non-cognitive training, such as physical exercise). They review empirical evidence for each category, citing studies on multitasking, memory strategy training, speed of processing, and aerobic exercise. Additionally, the authors analyze the operational definitions used in the field, noting that over 80 unique definitions exist, leading to reported prevalence rates of successful aging ranging from less than 1% to over 90%. The findings indicate that older adults can improve performance through practice and that near transfer effects are robust, with meta-analyses showing significant improvements in memory performance. However, far transfer effects are difficult to demonstrate, with training often failing to generalize beyond the trained domain. Conversely, very far transfer shows promise; aerobic exercise interventions significantly improve attention, processing speed, episodic memory, and executive function. The authors also highlight that cognitive gerontology provides targeted measures (e.g., tests of specific memory or executive functions) that are more sensitive to change than broad clinical tools like the Mini-Mental Status Examination, which often lack the resolution to detect modest gains in normal aging populations. The significance of this work lies in its proposal to bridge the disconnect between sociopolitical value judgments and scientific research. The authors conclude that cognitive gerontology should not define successful aging but should instead provide the tools to assess whether individuals meet externally defined standards and to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. To resolve the inconsistency in prevalence rates, they propose replacing absolute cutoffs with population-proportion-based standards for research purposes. Specifically, they suggest defining successful aging as performing more than one standard deviation above the mean (approximately 16% of the population), unsuccessful aging as more than one standard deviation below, and usual aging as falling within the middle 68%. This approach aims to establish a consensus on operational definitions, facilitating more rigorous exploration of interventions and their outcomes.
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-28.
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 2 | 2026-05-28 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 17 | 2026-06-09 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
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| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-28 |
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| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-10 |
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| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
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