Among the goals of this project are to describe age differences and changes in reasoning performance and to investigate processes underlying such age-related performance. Previous analyses demonstrated cross-sectional age differences in concept problem solving for both men and women in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA). Furthermore, magnitude of individual change over six years was age related; younger men tended to improve both in effectiveness of solutions and in number of problems solved correctly, whereas older men tended to decline. Although a large proportion of both the men and the women in the BLSA are educated, it is possible that some part of the age differences and age changes found in problem solving is attributable to those participants with lower education. When the data were analyzed for only those individuals with a college degree, the results were the same. For all three types of problem, the age correlation cross-sectionally was at least as high for the educated men as for all the men; and the results were the same for the women as well. Furthermore, the men initially in their sixties and seventies with college degree showed at least as much decline as all the men in those two ag groups. Education does not account for the age differences and changes with age in problem solving performance found in the BLSA.
