Study, which was designed to study the effect of education on the dynamics and the internal mechanisms of intellectual development of adults on Wechsler techniques have shown that mental activity in adults aged 18-50 years showed stabilization in the development of verbal and nonverbal intelligence, and continuous changes occur. Throughout the period under review stands clear periods characterizing the growth cycles of intelligence, the moments of recession and new growth. Furthermore, analysis of experimental data suggest that the heterogeneity of verbal and nonverbal intelligence. The level of development of verbal intelligence for each year of life is higher than the non-verbal, that is, the development of adult intelligence is due to preferential development of verbal and logical structures, using language and symbols.
The diagnostic value of the final estimates of level of individual intelligence and analysis to the characteristics of level of intellectual activity, which initially focused on psychometric intelligence tests, including Wechsler test are clearly insufficient for the diagnosis of human identity intellectual activity [Mankovsky, Cool, 1990]. For example, is a division of incorrect set of tests on the “verbal” and “nonverbal” on such formal criteria as the nature of the stimulus material (verbal or symbolic object-practical) and the type of response (in the form of a verbal report or practical manipulative actions). Accordingly, the terms “verbal” and “nonverbal” intelligence are very conditioned by psychological heterogeneity presenting their cognitive functions.
This has led researchers to look for new methodological procedures for deeper and more complete description of the specific intellectual property. Of particular interest in this regard are studies of cognitive styles – individual differences in cognitive processes that characterize the typical particular person methods of processing information in constructing the image of reality. The study of cognitive styles in the elderly, according to several authors, will provide significant additional information about the dynamics of intellectual development in the last stages of ontogeny.
These data confirmed the heterochrony intellectual development in ontogenesis. On the one hand, there is an organic unity of involution (regression) and evolution (progressive) changes in the nature of intellectual activity in the aging process, on the other hand, creates a powerful compensatory mechanisms to ensure that such a reorganization of intelligence that is able to provide the necessary adaptive effects. For example, intellectual integrity in the later stages of ontogeny is provided mainly through the work of conceptual thinking mechanisms that compensate for the reduction in the efficiency of mechanisms for spatial transformation and operational forms of information processing.
In addition, the uniqueness of intellectual activity in old age is due not only to changes in the quality of the intelligence (selective reduction or increase in certain manifestations of intellectual activity), but also changes in the features of its structural organization (increase disintegration of individual cognitive functions).
In the later stages of ontogeny are no significant changes in those verbal cognitive functions that are associated with the stock of knowledge, the ability to generalize and categorical understanding of the meanings of words.