Wisdom-related knowledge in a life review task: Age differences and the role of professional specialization.

Adopts life review as an avenue to access wisdom-related knowledge and examines the contribution of age and type of professional specialization to individual differences in wisdom-related knowledge. Women from 2 age groups/cohorts (young, M?=?32 yrs; old, M?=?71 yrs) and different professional specializations (human services vs nonhuman services) were asked to think aloud about the life review of a fictitious woman who was either young or old. Verbal protocols were scored on 5 wisdom-related criteria; factual and procedural knowledge about life, life-span contextualism, relativism of values, recognition, and management of uncertainty. Three major findings emerged. First, human-services professionals outperformed the control group. Second, old adults performed as well as young adults. Third, for older adults wisdom-related performance was enhanced by the match between their own age and the age of the fictitious character. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)