Cognitive ageing in developing societies is marked with psychosocial issues such as education, occupation, lifestyle, social support, social interaction and exclusion that may affect cognitive–affective–behavioural changes with ageing. We also present a study based on cognitive profiling of young (N = 79), middle-aged (N = 54) and older adults (N = 43) in India, which examined learning and memory for verbal and visuospatial information, overall cognitive functions, subjective complaints about cognitive difficulties, neuropsychiatric problems, anxiety and emotion regulation. The study shows cognitive changes compared to young and comparable rate of learning and retrieval among middle-aged and older adults for verbal and visuospatial material, correlated with general cognitive ability. The subjective complaints were not correlated with the objective measures of cognitive functions, highlighting the importance of both to show early cognitive changes. The relationship between cognitive functions and emotion regulation or behavioural/emotional changes was observed for young and middle-aged adults but not for older adults. Findings are discussed in the context of the lifespan perspective of cognitive ageing, cognitive reserve, psychosocial environment and social–emotional selectivity theory.

在发展中社会，认知老化的特征是社会心理问题，例如教育，职业，生活方式，社会支持，社会互动和排斥，这些因素可能会随着年龄的增长而影响认知-情感-行为的变化。我们还提出了一项基于印度年轻人（N = 79），中年人（N = 54）和老年人（N = 43）的认知特征分析的研究，该研究针对语言和视觉空间信息，整体认知功能检查了学习和记忆能力，关于认知困难，神经精神疾病，焦虑和情绪调节的主观抱怨。该研究表明，与青年人相比，在语言和视觉空间材料方面的认知变化与年轻人的学习和检索率相当，与总体认知能力相关。主观主诉与认知功能的客观指标不相关，突出了两者对显示早期认知变化的重要性。观察到青年和中年成年人的认知功能与情绪调节或行为/情绪变化之间的关系，而老年人则没有。在认知衰老，认知储备，社会心理环境和社会情感选择性理论的生命周期视角下讨论了发现。