COGNITIVE EMOTIONAL MATURITY IN ADULTHOOD AND AGING

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There has been a surge of recent interest in adaptive and progressive aspects of adult and later life cognitive development, but no research has been aimed, as yet at examining various components of the resulting conceptual and empirical framework within a single research project. Nor has there been any effort at attempting to disentangle the relative contributions of age/maturation and time/cohort change effects. This study aims to test, within an integrated, sequential design, the hypothesis that there are two distinct components of cognitive-emotional maturity. The first is primarily concerned with reflective thinking and cognitive complexity, while the second is primarily related to social maturity and flexibility of defense. These two components are also hypothesized to be a function of different environmental antecedents, the first being mediated primarily by environmental complexity, the second by family relationships promoting security. Delineating and defining these different components of cognitive-emotional maturity and their course through adulthood will help refine our theoretical and empirical understanding of the nature of healthy, adaptive late life development. The proposed 5-year research project employs a combination of longitudinal and cross-sectional sequences. At time 1, a sample of 432 adults, stratified by age, sex, and age/cohort group, will be obtained. These individuals will be retested at Time 2. In addition, a new independent stratified sample of 216 adults will be obtained at Time 2. The research employs a confirmatory factor analytic method. In separate analyses, the research examines a structural model of the relationship between hypothesized dimensions of cognitive-emotional maturity, reflective cognition and social maturity. First, the relationship between these dimensions and more traditional dimensions of intellectual functioning (crystallized and fluid intelligence) will be examined; second a model about different environmental determinants (organizational/control and relationship) of the two cognitive-emotional dimensions will be developed; and third, a structural causal model of the effect of these environmental precursors on adult cognitive-emotional maturity will be tested. Descriptive MANOVAS also will be performed in an attempt to disentangle the effects related to age/maturation vs. those due to time/cohort change, testing/instrumentation, and experimental mortality.