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Enjoy Your Ageless Mental Agility  •  209

                                   100
                                  Percentage Maintaining Over Seven years
                                    90

                                    80
                                    70

                                    60

                                    50

                                    40
                                    30

                                    20

                                    10

                                     0
                                           Verbal     Spatial   Inductive  Number      Word
                                          Meaning   Orientation  Reasoning            Fluency


                                                        to age 60        to age 67
                                                        to age 74        to age 81


                                Table 7-1 Proportion of Individuals Who Maintain Stable
                                Levels of Performance Over Seven Years on Primary Abilities,
                                Schaie, 1996.


                                abilities well into old age. As late as their sixties, most peo-
                                ple do not show significant changes in mental abilities from
                                the last testing. By their eighties, most people have experi-
                                enced some decline in at least one area. Moreover, between
                                the ages of 74 and 81, less than half showed mental declines
                                on all of the mental activities tested. The other half showed
                                declines in some but not all abilities, particularly those re-
                                quiring psychomotor speed.
                                   Other studies, such as the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of
                                Aging (BLSA), confirm these results. The BLSA has followed
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