Center for Demography of Health and Aging

CDHA co-sponsored an international conference on the Future of Cognitive Aging Research with the Population Research Institute and the Gerontology Center of the Pennsylvania State University. Its aims were to build upon the mandates set by the National Research Council's Committee on Future Directions for Cognitive Research on Aging, and articulated in the Aging Mind: Opportunities in Cognitive Research (National Research Council, 2000). A group of international experts on cognitive aging representing the fields of developmental psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, behavioral genetics, demography, gerontology, sociology, economics, biostatistics, and epidemiology gathered at this working conference. These top researchers came from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. They focused on the state of the field and built a multidisciplinary agenda for future research on cognitive aging. The main objectives of the conference were to: (1) summarize the current state of cognitive theorizing as related to processes of aging, (2) assess what is known about cognitive aging phenomena in terms of changes and causes, (3) critique the research designs and measurement models on which our current knowledge base rests, (4) consider some promising alternative designs and innovative lines of interdisciplinary research, and (5) discuss critical issues of the data needs for the future.