Artefactum · Oct 8, 2026

LEARNING IN LATER LIFE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND MEDICALIZATION: A NARRATIVE REVIEW

By Santos MDS, Samogin IG, Lourençon IE et al.

Aging is a heterogeneous process that does not equate to illness, and the distinction between senescence and senility has direct clinical consequences. Mild cognitive changes in older adults are often interpreted as early signs of neurodegeneration, which favors predominantly pharmacological responses. This narrative review aimed to discuss learning across aging as a central axis of clinical psychology and to examine how this axis may contribute to healthy aging and to the prevention of avoidable medicalization. Publications indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE and Google Scholar were consulted, with emphasis on the period from 2010 to 2026, and complemented by reference works. The literature indicates that older adults preserve the capacity to learn, with a reorganization, rather than a homogeneous loss, of the cognitive profile; that measured performance depends on task structure, on the strategies employed and on conditions such as stereotype threat; and that learning gains should be assessed by the transfer of strategies to new situations rather than by performance on the trained task. No studies designed to test whether clinical psychological practice reduces the medicalization of aging were identified, a gap that constitutes a research agenda. A psychological anamnesis structured by the hypothetico-deductive method is proposed, in which hypotheses related to learning, anxiety and affective disorders are tested before the neurodegenerative hypothesis, as a resource to reduce assessment errors and premature pharmacological referral.

doi.org/10.23900/artefactum.v25i11.4581Open accessMechanisms