A. Fluid intelligence is applied to new tasks to design creative solutions, and declines with age.
B. Crystallized intelligence is accumulated from past experience, and increases with age.
A. Creativity does not have to be identified with novelty for its own sake.
B. Creativity in an individual changes with age.
C. Sources of creativity in later life result from complex factors.
1. People can optimize their cognitive functions by drawing on their strengths and compensating for losses as they age.
2. The classic aging pattern does not have much validity.
D. The questions of when creativity peaks is still an open one.
1. Studies purporting to show when creativity peaks are heavily flawed in their design.
2. Volume of creativity may decrease with age, but so does the number of errors made, making late-life creativity more productive than early-life creativity.
III. Creativity in late-life varies across disciplines.
A. There is great personal variation in creativity potential.
B. Exceptional people are more creative in late-life than people with lower potential are at their creative peak early in life.
1. Individuals vary in the age at which they are most creative: some reach their creative peak early in life, others late in life.
IV. The decline in creativity in later life is very gradual.
A. The post-optimum decline in creativity in late life decelerates.
B. A decline in output does not necessarily indicate a decline in creative potential.
1. Many factors can cause a decline in creative output (ill health, lack of motivation, lack of time, concentration of life issues, etc.) but this does not signify a lack of creativity in the individual.
V. There are two types of creativity: that of exceptional people, and that of ordinary people.
A. It is no longer believed that older people cannot learn new skills.
B. Older people have been found to be retrainable for new technologies ...