U.S. Supreme Court justices and other federal judges are, effectively, appointed for life, with no built-in check on their cognitive functioning as they approach old age. There is about a century of research on aging and intelligence that shows the vulnerability of processing speed, fluid reasoning, visual-spatial processing, and working memory to…

The purpose of the study was to test a model of causal relationships among cognitive reserve (CR), personality variables such as Neuroticism and Openness to experience, and divergent thinking (DT), independently evaluating performance in different domains (verbal and graphic). It was hypothesized that CR, Openness, and Neuroticism would each…