PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF AGEING 



Sir Frederic Bartlett, c.b.e., f.r.s. 



Applied Psychology Research Unit, Cambridge. 



About seven years ago the Nuffield Trustees, with tlie 

 approval of the University, established a group at Cambridge 

 for the experimental psychological study of the effects of 

 ageing in the case of normally fit persons. It is a few of the 

 chief results achieved by this group which I am now going to 

 describe and consider. The principal merit for the achieve- 

 ments is due to Mr. A. T. Welford, the Director of the Group, 

 and to his fellow- workers. If there are mistakes of interpreta- 

 tion they are mine. 



It was from the beginning agreed that we should not be 

 much concerned with the extremely old, but rather with the 

 critical age ranges from round about forty-five to sixty-five. 

 It was also agreed that we should not confine our attention 

 to relatively isolated items of behaviour, such as sensory 

 threshold measures, reaction times, immediate or remote 

 memory span disconnected from any other activity. We 

 should, rather, look at these in that intimate association with 

 continued work which they have in practically all forms of 

 day by day actual behaviour. This meant that our main 

 pre-occupation must be to try to find out something about 

 the nature and conditions of skilled behaviour, whether of 

 body or mind; and that our initial problems would concern 

 demonstrable changes in skilled activities which normally 

 occur with advancing age. 



We had, of course, some guide, both from the results of a 

 great amount of earlier experimentation, and from commonly 

 held opinions. Nearly everybody, for instance, agrees that 

 most actions are slowed up with increasing age, and many 

 experimenters had already reported this. But when does this 



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