By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    bowl of vegetable salad
    Raw Foods: benefits and harms
    November 9, 2021
    pros and cons of the keto diet
    Read This Before You Follow the Keto Diet
    May 18, 2022
    spinal cord injuries
    4 Potential Causes of Spinal Cord Injuries (and How to Seek Compensation)
    May 25, 2022
    Latest News
    5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
    July 31, 2025
    Why Custom Telemedicine Apps Outperform Off‑the‑Shelf Solutions
    July 20, 2025
    How Probate Planning Shapes the Future of Your Estate and Family Care
    July 17, 2025
    Beyond Nutrition: Everyday Foods That Support Whole-Body Health
    June 15, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    Effective Healthcare Requires a Social Approach
    June 15, 2015
    CCBHCs
    2016 Excellence in Behavioral Health Program Design
    February 23, 2016
    conducting Clinical Trial
    5 Tips for Conducting a Clinical Trial
    April 21, 2024
    Latest News
    How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
    July 17, 2025
    How Health Choices and Legal Actions Intersect After an Injury
    July 17, 2025
    How communities and healthcare providers can address slip and fall injuries with legal awareness
    July 17, 2025
    Let Your Lawyer Handle the Work Before You Pay Medical Costs
    July 6, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Aging Brains Slower Due to More Knowledge and Experience, Not Cognitive Decline
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Specialties > Geriatrics > Aging Brains Slower Due to More Knowledge and Experience, Not Cognitive Decline
GeriatricsWellness

Aging Brains Slower Due to More Knowledge and Experience, Not Cognitive Decline

Susan Scutti
Susan Scutti
Share
6 Min Read
SHARE

cognitive declineWhen aging is conceived of as ongoing cognitive decline, many older adults contemplate an increasing lifespan with anxiety instead of relief.

cognitive declineWhen aging is conceived of as ongoing cognitive decline, many older adults contemplate an increasing lifespan with anxiety instead of relief. In the hopes of dispelling false assumptions about aging, a team of German researchers created a novel model to show that older adults’ lackluster performance on tests used in aging studies reflects their increased knowledge and experience as opposed to a decline in cognitive abilities. “…Population aging is seen as a problem because of the fear that older adults will be a burden on society,” the authors wrote in their paper published online in Topics in Cognitive Science.“What is more likely is that the myth of cognitive decline is leading to an absurd waste of human potential and human capital. It thus seems likely that an informed understanding of the cognitive costs and benefits of aging will benefit all society, not just its older members.”

Computing Capacity and Performance

The researchers began with an analysis of psychometric tests and discovered that such tests do not take into account the statistical skew of increased knowledge or human experience. As a consequence, when these tests are used to compare age groups, they paint a misleading picture of cognitive development in older adults because they do not “control for” these elements. The researchers hypothesized, then, that many of the assumptions scientists make about cognitive decline are seriously flawed and, for the most part, formally invalid because common measures of cognitive performance do not control for age or experience. The researchers then set out to prove that what is typically taken as measures of or evidence for decline actually is quite the opposite. In fact, basic principles suggest that older adults exhibit greater sensitivity to the nuances of test items than younger adults, and for this reason, their comparative performance on tests may shine a little less brightly.

To prove their theory, the researchers trained computers as though they were humans, reading a certain amount each day, and learning new things along the way.  When the computer “read” only so much, its performance on cognitive tests resembled that of a young adult. But when the same computer read as much as a human might over a lifetime, its performance appeared more like that of an older adult. In a word, the computer was slower.  This, though, was not a sign that its processing capacity had declined but that its database had grown, giving it more data to process, which inevitably takes more time. In another test, the researchers, with a little help from technology, estimated the number of words an adult could be expected to learn over a lifetime. Then, they loaded their computer with a similar-sized word dataset and performed vocabulary tests, then compared the results to those of a computer loaded with a younger-adult-sized word dataset. Unsurprisingly, the computers took much longer to search for words as the size of their database grew.

“Given that the models run (and can be rerun) on computers, the possibility that any differences in their performance are due to aging hardware can be eliminated; instead, their patterns of performance reflect the information-processing costs that must inevitably be incurred as knowledge is acquired,” wrote the authors, whose work also shows how what is taken to be “evidence” of cognitive decline actually demonstrates an older person’s greater mastery of acquired knowledge. “Once the cost of processing this extra information is controlled for in studies of human performance, findings that are usually taken to suggest declining cognitive capacities can be seen instead to support little more than the unsurprising idea that choosing between or recalling items becomes more difficult as their numbers increase.” If you have more clothes in your closet, it’s harder to pick out an outfit in the morning.

By 2030, 72 million Americans will be aged 65 or older and by 2050, that number should swell to nearly 89 million people, or more than double the number of older adults in the U.S. in 2010. False ideas about cognitive decline, then, could very well exert a negative influence on the lives of millions and millions of adults. Very simply, the researchers concluded, “We hope this can change.”

Source: Ramscar M, Hendrix P, Shaoul C, Millin P, Baayen H. The myth of cognitive decline: Nonlinear dynamics of lifelong learning. Topics in Cognitive Science. 2014.

(shutterstock)

TAGGED:cognitive decline
Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
5 Steps to a Promising Career as a Healthcare Administrator
Health
July 31, 2025
holistic dental
Holistic Dentist Services Are Natural and Safe
Dental health Specialties
July 28, 2025
botox certification
Help Improve People’s Skin Health Via Botox Certification
Skin Specialties
July 22, 2025
Telemedicine Apps
Why Custom Telemedicine Apps Outperform Off‑the‑Shelf Solutions
Health
July 20, 2025

You Might also Like

Home HealthlifestyleWellness

Ways You Can Make Healthy Habits Stick

May 19, 2022

Track This Bill – Extending the Dependent Care Credit

March 22, 2012
kinds of body pain
Wellness

10 Kinds Of Body Pain That Could Be Linked To Foot Problems

January 9, 2022
Assorted fruits and vegetables
Wellness

Shopping Healthy

July 4, 2013
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?