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Many seniors are actually just as mentally agile as younger people, they just focus on accuracy rather than speed when making a decision, new research says.
Seniors may be just as mentally agile as younger people. The reason their thinking appears sluggish is they mull things over longer, a new study shows.
Researchers have found that when people aged 60 and older are asked to make quick decisions, they respond as slowly as young children. And both groups react much more slowly than young adults, according to the study published in Child Development.
The slow response times in children are the sign of brains that are still maturing, said Roger Ratcliff, a study co-author and professor of behavioral and social sciences at Ohio State University. But the apparent sluggish thinking in the elderly may simply be the result of seniors emphasizing accuracy over speed when they deliberate.
The new research could have important repercussions for seniors worried that their thinking has become too slow to allow them to continue driving safely or performing other tasks that occasionally require quick reaction times.
Ratcliff and his colleagues have been studying the impact of aging on mental agility for the last decade. In their new study, they looked at how seniors and other adults compare to children.
They ran several experiments designed to rate mental ability and agility across all ages. In one, for example, more than 300 study volunteers watched as a group of asterisks flashed up on a computer screen. The number of asterisks ranged anywhere from 31 to 70. The volunteers were told to quickly decide whether they’d been shown a small number (31 to 50) or a large number (51 to 70) of the star shaped marks.
When the researchers looked over the responses they found that response times and accuracy both improved with age, up to a point. Accuracy remained good even among older volunteers, but response times in general suffered as people got older.
Of course, in some cases, early dementia or the effects of medication may be the cause of slowing mental agility, but in healthy seniors, slow reaction times among the elderly can often be improved, Ratcliff said. In another set of experiments, he and his colleagues coached older volunteers to obsess less about accuracy and to focus more on speed. In the end, his seniors were able to react just as quickly as college students.
Ratcliff suspects that other age related deficits, such as declining memories, make seniors less sure of themselves and that makes them want to deliberate longer so they won’t make mistakes.
“Older people don’t want to make errors, so what they do is adopt a more conservative decision criteria and that slows them down,” he explained.
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Remember - Seniors have a large database in their brains which they search for the answer to the questions and problems - it definitely takes extra time to get through it. But think of the benefit of all that experience!
What was the question?
A conversation with them is like watching paint dry. It's better if they just listen.
ROFL... PS-46, etc.... Great metaphor... in fact I have used it myself... the brain is like a hard drive that is maxed... so the paths to vast information and experience are just more complex and of course take longer.
This, I think, is probable for every human being... but one thing is true. Our first priority should always be our brain cells health... check and research the side effects of any meds... cut them back whenever possible.. they dull the mind..
... especially pain-killers. They become addictive. Period.
Yeah, I'm going with that explaination.
Hmmmm. Give me a moment or two to think about what I want to say.....I've never been this old before (67.)...Wait. "{No Comment."
This is very true, as there are women and men in their 80s and 90s,mostly women because the men are gone, that watch like 20 or more bingo sheets,(not easy) while the younger person next to them can handle like 10 to 20.
Also most seniors can finish a crossword quicker than most,and jumble,soduko.
Most the elderly I deal with daily are very sharp, they are just set in their ways,and think in a different perspective(time frame) than us.
Thank goodness when we are that old we can have an hour to figure it out.lol
Would it be nice to gain our youth back? As we are born into sin, sickness and death.
Ahh yes, youth and exuberance, and swift reactions. No match for age, experience and treachery....
When you're young, the answers to everything seem simple and you believe you know them. If you are truly intelligent, as you age you learn that the world is much more complex, and things you are certain of can be horribly wrong. Historically this has been called wisdom - as opposed to intelligence and/or knowledge.
HNL.... a top notch post! Excellent... right on point and well expressed.
hey, hey, right on!
YOUNG FOLKS:
shoot,
ready,
aim
OLD FOLKS:
aim,
ready hmmmm
...do I really want to bother with this?
...does having a beer sound like a better idea?...
Ok...ya got me
shoot
There's another reason for seniors' hesitation in answering and it has nothing to do with speed or accuracy. It's more concerned with determining the motives of the speaker in asking the question and how to answer in a way that could trigger the questioner into revealing those motives.
Well. "We've been campaigning in all 57 states, and have one to go!" (paraphrased)
Quote by our senior executive in charge, Barrack Hussein Obama.
You are both a disgusted and disgusting conservative. Too bad for you.
Everyone makes blunders when talking 'on the cuff' in public. Shall we roll out the Bush, Reagan and Quayle lists?
I've been doing a lot of mulling lately.
People in their 20's are certain they know everything. People in their 30's are a bit less certain. So it goes.
Yep, the more we learn, the more we learn that we don't know everything. LOL.. and when we get to that stage, some of us (who really do know how to use computers!) have a compulsion and downright joy in researching to learn more.
And that goes for most intelligent folks over their 30s... but not all? ... accuracy does not touch some mentalities whose age is a mystery to me. I notice incredibly bigoted comments on many different issues and frankly, I think that might be worth examining very closely as to what percentage of attitudes have overtaken the general population. Who are these people, pathetically irrational, seeming absent basic education, who violate the rules here and get away with it?
It's a conundrum.
My Mom was already in her early 60's when the first Nintendo came out, but she could beat any game she wanted to on it (and give me a 50-50 run on the two-player games too). She was a champ at Tetris and Dr. Mario. Most games she just didn't like because they were shooting and fighting games, though she sometimes made exceptions if the enemies were monsters and not other humans. She only quit playing them when I lost interest in console games and somewhat out of protest over how violent the games were getting. In my 50's now, I still play some of the more sophisticated RPG's (even Skyrim), but I'm dead-in-a-second on most first-person shooters and side-scrollers. PS3 owner.
@ disgusted; How relevant you are.lol You try campaigning for hours,days on end and not make a freudian slip,or any slip for that matter, I do not believe you have that kind of fortitude.Stop derailing.
Speed vs accuracy? Depends on the situation, e.g., "win the battle, lose the war".
(c) 2011
unfortunately the mainstream status quo is influenced mainly by middle-aged and younger people so that those older are portrayed as not being with it when in reality the culture itself is not "with-it" choosing style over substance disregarding the hard-earned wisdom of older generations which can lead to something like the Iraq war
then again a lot of the people associated with the decision to go to Iraq were older than dirt so maybe it's just the elders of the poorer classes whose wisdom is not heeded
Philip Monroe... and your source is...? and exactly who are "older than dirt"? why dirt? older than the cosmos might work better... I think you are metaphor-deprived.
All age groups have something of value to offer. Children give their wonder and ability to think outside the box. Young adults have enthusiasm and can-do energy. Seniors have the big picture, experience, and patience.
Just think what it might be like if we held hands across all age groups.
What a lovely idea, jerri-1! At 60, being unemployed, it's a little tougher trying to find a job. I casually mentioned to my son that maybe I should become a tattoo artist. I have no tattoos, but am very artistic and have always colored inside the lines (almost always). His reply to me was first, a chuckle, then he said something that really hurt me. He said I was "past my prime".
I didn't raise my son to be age-biased, but he and his girlfriend have the same attitude. We went to see the movie, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and while I was put off by the sexual violence, the girl-on-girl action didn't bother me at all. I had already read the book when it first came out on paperback. My son and girlfriend mentioned, after the movie, that all these sexual things were probably shocking to older people. I pointed out their age-bias and believe I made my point, but it bothers me that younger people seem to have an idea that all older people have only puritanical ideas. We are NOT all old "fogies" out there and have more sexual experience, as well as practical knowledge, patience and the ability to learn. We may take a little more time, but I think that's an advantage not a disadvantage. Meanwhile...still thinking about tattooing...lol
It always irritates me when a young whelp assumes that because I'm trying to be thoughtfull, I am approaching senility. You dont get older by being a fool or a knave. I think the expression is " young and dumb"
I'm not as knee-jerk impetuous as when I was younger. I think that is called wisdom and maturity.
Wish it were true....unfortunately for me, I am usually desperately trying to remember a fact or a word.
Me too... First its names, then its nouns. I guess it is all part of the process.