Wisdom of age
IT feels like the beginning of the end. You cannot programme your video and you cannot remember why you got up from the TV to go to the kitchen.
IT feels like the beginning of the end. You cannot programme your video and you cannot remember why you got up from the TV to go to the kitchen.
For the elderly these are moments that signify one thing: the onset of senility the downward slide into incoherence and loss of mental function.
Or at least that is what scientists used to think until recent studies revealed that old age is by no means a guarantee of mental degeneration.
Indeed, many attributes survive intact into our eighties, it seems. Some even improve.
“Social, verbal and personal judgments may actually improve with age and there is a good name for this: it’s called wisdom,†says Molly Wagster, of the US National Institute of Ageing.
This point was also stressed in the journal Science, which devoted a recent issue to ageing and concluded, in an editorial, that contrary to assumptions “the old actually have a lot to teach the young.â€
In the past, old age was assumed to bring only loss of faculties.
“But that merely reflected what we were looking for,†says Dr. Thomas Hess, of North Carolina State University.
“We were looking at problem areas, because we were interested in understanding illnesses like Alzheimer’s.
Now we have started to look at what happens in normal brain functions and the position looks less gloomy.â€
In one experiment by Hess, groups of older and younger people were asked to judge fictitious characters for honesty and intelligence. The older group turned out to be better at labelling people as dishonest or bright.
In another experiment, old and young people were asked to create stories on various themes. These were then read to judges who were unaware of the authors’ ages. Older people turned out to be better storytellers.
Even in cases where scientists had previously discovered a decline in a faculty for example, memory, new studies show that this degeneration is far less clear-cut than had previously been realised.
It may take old people longer to acquire new skills but there are compensations: older people are generally happier and have better mental health.
It won’t help you to remember why you went to the kitchen, of course. But you should feel happier when you get there.
Guardian
For the elderly these are moments that signify one thing: the onset of senility the downward slide into incoherence and loss of mental function.
Or at least that is what scientists used to think until recent studies revealed that old age is by no means a guarantee of mental degeneration.
Indeed, many attributes survive intact into our eighties, it seems. Some even improve.
“Social, verbal and personal judgments may actually improve with age and there is a good name for this: it’s called wisdom,†says Molly Wagster, of the US National Institute of Ageing.
This point was also stressed in the journal Science, which devoted a recent issue to ageing and concluded, in an editorial, that contrary to assumptions “the old actually have a lot to teach the young.â€
In the past, old age was assumed to bring only loss of faculties.
“But that merely reflected what we were looking for,†says Dr. Thomas Hess, of North Carolina State University.
“We were looking at problem areas, because we were interested in understanding illnesses like Alzheimer’s.
Now we have started to look at what happens in normal brain functions and the position looks less gloomy.â€
In one experiment by Hess, groups of older and younger people were asked to judge fictitious characters for honesty and intelligence. The older group turned out to be better at labelling people as dishonest or bright.
In another experiment, old and young people were asked to create stories on various themes. These were then read to judges who were unaware of the authors’ ages. Older people turned out to be better storytellers.
Even in cases where scientists had previously discovered a decline in a faculty for example, memory, new studies show that this degeneration is far less clear-cut than had previously been realised.
It may take old people longer to acquire new skills but there are compensations: older people are generally happier and have better mental health.
It won’t help you to remember why you went to the kitchen, of course. But you should feel happier when you get there.
Guardian