The Aging Mind at Work: A Framework for Age-Differentiated Cognitive Processing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As global populations age, workplaces are increasingly shaped by older adults whose cognitive profiles differ in systematic ways from their younger counterparts. This paper reviews age-related changes in cognition through both deficit-based and adaptation-focused lenses, examining how shifts in memory, attention, inhibitory control, and fluid versus crystallized intelligence affect workplace-relevant domains such as social cognition, creativity, and decision-making. To integrate these findings, it introduces the Age-Differentiated Processing Model, a stage-based framework outlining how older and younger adults differ in how they access, delete, integrate, retrieve, and act on information. The model emphasizes differences in how cognitive resources are allocated and applied across processing stages, shaped by contextual demands and motivational priorities. A real-world workplace scenario illustrates how these differences unfold in practice. Directions for future research, including the need for more ecologically valid and lifespan-inclusive studies, are discussed in the final section.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".