U.K.: Get Sharp - Older Really Is Wiser

LONDON, England (The Sunday Times, London), January 6, 2008: New findings seem to contradict one of the most widely accepted assumptions about ageing: that the human brain is at its most powerful between the ages of 18 and 26. Scientists have discovered that intelligence, instead of peaking in our youth, remains stable and, in some respects, gets sharper as we grow older. The researchers found that verbal skills continued to increase for at least two decades beyond the age of 20, while arithmetic ability remained constant. Their work suggests that many of the assumptions made by employers, policymakers and educational institutions about ageing need to be rethought. “Verbal ability appears to keep increasing over time,” said Lars Larsen, a psychologist at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, who led the research. In the study Larsen obtained the records of 4,300 American ex-servicemen who had been given a battery of intelligence tests when they joined the military at the age of about 20. The same servicemen were tested again two decades later. Larsen’s research involved carrying out a meticulous comparison of the two sets of data. The results, published in Intelligence, a peer-reviewed academic journal, show that the real changes in intelligence are more marked and more complex than had been realised. Larsen believes that the most likely reason for improvements in verbal skills is simply practice. Older people have had to solve far more social and practical problems than younger ones, so they have been forced to develop complex language skills. This effect overrides the slow but steady loss of brain cells that modern medical scanning techniques have confirmed begins in the late twenties. The study is part of a revolution in research into intelligence that began several years ago and has overturned the idea that intelligence peaks in early adulthood and then begins a long, slow and inevitable decline. Lorraine Tyler, head of the centre for speech, language and the brain at Cambridge University, where she is professor of cognitive neuroscience, said: “When we image the brain we do see physical atrophy with age but brain function can be preserved. This shows how plastic the brain is. It adapts and changes with age and other challenges.” Such findings raise the question of why past generations of psychologists suggested that reaching adulthood was followed by decline. Part of the explanation lies in the way people were tested, with researchers, often young, applying the same tests to young and old alike without making allowances for educational and cultural differences. This indiscriminate approach also helped to give rise to the idea that some races have lower IQs than others. Tyler believes that other, more subtle effects were also at work, with older people being given the idea they were expected to fail. She said: “In tests many people perform according to the expectations placed on them. If you let them know you expect them to do badly then they do.” Some people break free of such low expectations almost by accident. Daphne Fowler, one of Britain’s leading quiz champions, was 40 when she realised she had unusual mental powers. She said: “I was working as a secretary in a bank when I was asked to help a pub quiz team by recording the answers. I found that I could answer all the questions better than the rest of the team.” After she began cleaning up in pub quizzes, her five children entered her for Winner Takes All, a 1970s TV quiz, and then for others such as Sale of the Century. She proved a consistent winner. Now, at 68, she is a member of the team on Eggheads, the BBC2 show that pits quiz-show champions against experts. “I train my brain constantly with crosswords and sudoku,” Fowler said. “I am much sharper now than when I was in my twenties and I am still getting better.” Researchers say there is still a limit to intellectual growth. Eventually, neural atrophy catches up with everyone and decline sets in. However, this can be substantially delayed by lifestyle choices such as a healthy diet, exercise and avoidance of undue stress. Intelligence can also increase across generations. Professor James Flynn, a psychologist at the University of Otago, in New Zealand, found that IQ rises by about three points a decade. A typical American or European child tested in 1930 would have had an IQ of about 80, compared with an average of 100 now. By Jonathan Leake, Science Editor © Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.