Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 22904-4400, USA.
Annu Rev Psychol. 2012;63:201-26. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100328. Epub 2011 Jul 5.
Adult age differences in a variety of cognitive abilities are well documented, and many of those abilities have been found to be related to success in the workplace and in everyday life. However, increased age is seldom associated with lower levels of real-world functioning, and the reasons for this lab-life discrepancy are not well understood. This article briefly reviews research concerned with relations of age to cognition, relations of cognition to successful functioning outside the laboratory, and relations of age to measures of work performance and achievement. The final section discusses several possible explanations for why there are often little or no consequences of age-related cognitive declines in everyday functioning.
成人在各种认知能力方面的年龄差异有充分的记录，并且已经发现其中许多能力与工作场所和日常生活中的成功有关。然而，随着年龄的增长，很少有人的实际生活能力会下降，而造成这种实验室与现实生活差异的原因尚不清楚。本文简要回顾了与年龄与认知、认知与实验室外成功运作以及年龄与工作表现和成就衡量标准的关系相关的研究。最后一部分讨论了几个可能的解释，说明为什么在日常生活中，与年龄相关的认知能力下降通常没有或几乎没有任何后果。
