On cognitive abilities supposedly being worse the older you are I do not think this is true due to functional age being different from chronolgical age and aging can occur without cognitive impairment. Decline in cognitive impairment only happens because of certain conditions and some adults grow older without these conditions. It is a myth that aging brings on more memory loss. Normal changes of aging Normal changes include slower movement, activity, and processing of information. When a question is posed to an older adult, they may take time going through their thoughts to get the appropriate answer, because at that age they are more aware of leading people to the truth and so they do a life review in a short span of time. Since their memory bank is higher than that of a younger adult's, it can take them longer to process. However, this does not mean that they cannot comprehend or have deficits in thinking.