Which term best describes a measure based on years lived?

• A. Functional age
• B. Crystallized intelligence
• C. Chronological age
• D. Gerontology

Answer: (C)

When a measure is based on years lived, we call it chronological age. It’s simply the count of years from birth, providing a straightforward time-based label that doesn’t reflect health, functioning, or abilities.

This differs from other concepts: functional age looks at how well someone is functioning in daily life and may incorporate health and physical ability, not just time; crystallized intelligence is about knowledge and skills accumulated over life, which is about cognitive content rather than age; gerontology is the study of aging as a field, not a numerical measure of time lived. So for a metric literally determined by years since birth, the term is chronological age.