As we move ito our 30s, the ability to recall names and faces quickly may fall off, but other abilities, such as learning new words, peaks at a much later age. Researchers have found that if were to look at the many capabilities of the brain, different aspects would peak at different ages, in marked contrast to the earlier view that all functions deteriorate with age.
“Some things are better, and some things are worse as we age,” said Laura Germine, coauthor of the study and psychiatric researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s a complex, dynamic system. It’s nice as you get older to know that maybe I am not as quick as the college students, but I am a little wiser.”
The study involved almost 50,000 participants, who performed various tasks such as multiple-choice vocabulary tests, rapidly recalling numbers and symbols, and discerning facial emotions by looking only at the eyes. The study is thought to be among the largest to look at this aspect of human intelligence.
Different skills were found to peak at different ages, such as the ability to recall a number paired with a symbol displayed earlier, peaking in our late teens and falling off after that. However, the capability to discern emotion by looking only at the eyes seems to be strong at midlife around the age of 40, and remains more or less the same till the age of 60. Vocabulary skills too probably stay strong into our 60s. An interesting point to note here is that according to the data, vocabulary skills in people are peaking at a later age as they did in populations in the 1970s and 1980s.
“People are working longer in life and in more white collar jobs, where they are doing a lot more reading,” said Joshua Hartshorne, a brain scientist at MIT and a coauthor.
Germine and Hartshorne collected data through various experiments they conducted over the Internet, on various game-playing and puzzle-solving websites. The team says, the websites have gathered data about almost 3 million people. The data was also compared to similar paper-and-pencil tests conducted in the last 40 years, to preventany data bias towards those who may be more proficient with he Internet..
The study [pdf] titled ‘When does cognitive functioning peak?” was published in the journal Psychological Science.
