147 persons have been tested 3 times (1965–1970) within the ‘Bonn Gerontological Longitudinal Study’ with the ‘Hamburg-Wechsler-Intelligenz-Test für Erwach-sene’ (HAWIE). The results of this study indicate the relatively unimportant role of the chronological age variable, when other determinants (as social criteria – education, profession, sex- and health condition) are statistically controlled. The second task of the study reported here was the comparison of intellectual pattern by means of factor analysis. Factor analyses yielded two factors in each of the three measurement years for both the age groups of the 7th and 8th decade. Re-analyses of about 25 correlational matrices from literature brought identical factors: ‘verbal comprehension’ and ‘perceptual organization’. Conclusion: in all former studies, methodological discrepancies rather than real age differences indicated by less factors with increasing age led to some well-known hypotheses and theories about intellectual de-differe