ABSTRACT
Normal behavior has never been an especially popular topic for clinicians and academics, and the same is true for normal cognitive aging. Normal cognitive aging is synonymous with "average" or "usual" cognitive aging. Most exhibit a small number of health conditions, risky lifestyle habits, and psychosocial qualities that set them apart from the optimal cognitive agers, but they are functioning at a noticeably higher level than those at high risk for cognitive impairment. Normal cognitive agers routinely showed evidence of one or more of the risky behaviors listed. A common pattern among the normal cognitive agers is little apparent effort to evaluate how they are functioning mentally and make the necessary accommodations. Many normal agers choose to accept cognitive decline and let nature take its course to deal with the realities of growing older, which includes the gradual decline of physical and mental abilities.
