# Do we get dumber academically with age?



## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

I've noticed a trend in my long school career. When I was my teens to twenties, I did really well in school (memory/regurgitation?) but I was a total retard in real life in comparison to people my own age. In my 30s (I briefly took a few courses in my late 30s), I noticed my academic success went a bit downward and now in my forties (having forced to go back) it went further down. But, in many ways I feel a lot more intelligent compared to before. What gives? It's confusing me. Has anyone had this experience? Am I getting dumber (at least school-wise) even though I feel much more intelligent?


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## sarafinanickelbocker (May 16, 2010)

I'm not really sure what is going on. My mother went back to school and she is 65. She used to be a straight "A" student when she was in her late teens, early twenties and it didn't take much effort on her prat. Now she works her butt off to get "C"s and "B"s. In her case it's probably her organizational skills, per one of her instructors. I would think that if you haven't been in school a while, you're not used to being a student anymore and have to adjust again. *shrugs*


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## OrbitalResonance (Sep 21, 2010)

It certainly feels like it for me.


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## anti-socialsocialite (May 1, 2011)

You are more intelligent than before because you have had new experiences which have helped you to grow as an individual and have taught you life lessons. You've surely gained some sort of wisdom through age. However you may find that your brain has difficulty mastering new concepts as you age further. You can only counteract this by exercising your brain in every way that you can to ensure that you stay sharp, and through doubling your efforts. I'm quite young myself, but I fear the eventual slowing of my brain's ability to learn, so I'm going to do everything that I possibly can to ensure that it doesn't happen to me. You can keep sharp as well. 

The problem with your grades may not be because of your ability to retain information at all however. Perhaps the reason you aren't making the grades that you used to is because you are not as motivated as before, or you are not interested in the material. Maybe the school you are going to now grades more strictly than the ones you went to in your younger days.


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## sansd (Mar 22, 2006)

You learn new information more slowly (especially if you are just trying to memorize things), but you have more structured knowledge and understanding which you can relate things back to.


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## komorikun (Jan 11, 2009)

*'Brain decline' begins at age 27*

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7945569.stm



> Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests.
> 
> Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought all decline in our late 20s. Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said.
> 
> ...


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## millenniumman75 (Feb 4, 2005)

No - our academic stuff kind of freezes.


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## odd_one_out (Aug 22, 2006)

While speed and memory decline, what they call crystallised intelligence increases. 

I've noticed the opposite trend where I'm getting quicker and better with age. I started peaking around 30. It's most likely because I was completely screwed over by my anxiety before my 30s. I know it severely affected my academic potential and processing. I'm also wondering if it's related to developmental delay. Everything seems better now.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

I did a google search of the stuff you guys mentioned and now I think I understand why one can get both dumber and yet maybe not so much. But overall there still seems to be a steady decline? Here's 2 interesting quotes:



> The peak of capacity for both fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence occurs at age 26. This is followed by a slow decline.





> *Fluid intelligence* or fluid reasoning is the capacity to think logically and *solve problems in* *novel situations*, independent of acquired knowledge. It is the ability to analyze novel problems, identify patterns and relationships that underpin these problems and the extrapolation of these using logic. It is necessary for all logical problem solving, *especially scientific, mathematical and technical problem solving.* Fluid reasoning includes inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.
> 
> *Crystallized intelligence* is the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience. It should not be equated with memory or knowledge, but it does rely on accessing information from long-term memory. Crystallized intelligence is one's lifetime or intellectual achievement, as demonstrated largely through one's vocabulary and general knowledge. *This improves somewhat with age, as experiences tend to expand one's knowledge.*
> 
> The terms are somewhat misleading because one is not a "crystallized" form of the other. Rather, they are believed to be separate neural and mental systems. Crystallized intelligence is indicated by a person's depth and breadth of general knowledge, vocabulary, and the ability to reason using words and numbers. It is the product of educational and cultural experience in interaction with fluid intelligence. *Fluid and crystallized intelligence are thus correlated with each other, and most IQ tests attempt to measure both varieties. For example, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) measures fluid intelligence on the performance scale and crystallized intelligence on the verbal scale.* The overall IQ score is based on a combination of these two scales.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence

Maybe this explains why so many scientists/physicists become philosophers of their respective fields as they age? Personally, I'm just completely bored of my field. I can't stand the medical sciences. I can't believe I went into them. And I've become very interested/obsessed about philosophy/physics. That's all I read, even at work. The problem is that I don't keep up with the latest stuff in my field. But I still think that I'm better at understanding the material than when I was younger even though I'm probably deceiving myself. Maybe it's the better verbal/language skills due to crystallized intelligence as mentioned above?


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## Hippo (May 10, 2009)

I'm dumber, I think. Probably too much booze and other bad things


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## Nothereanymore (Dec 20, 2011)

I feel like I'm becoming much more scatterbrained and forgetful these days...


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## odd_one_out (Aug 22, 2006)

I checked the reference to the statement that both fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystallised intelligence (Gc) peak at age 26, because it didn't look right, and found it to be false. (Wiki people didn't appear to carefully read what they cited).

In the paper (Comparative Longitudinal Structural Analyses of the Growth and Decline of Multiple Intellectual Abilities Over the Life Span by McArdle et al. 2002) they find that Gf peaks at 22.8 years, and Gc peaks at 35.6 years. Early models had Gc keep increasing till old age.

Gc has a slower decline. Gf decline is at 45.5 years. Gc decline is at 71.3 years.

I've sketched the curves below (they use Rasch W units). Fluid's on the left and crystallised's on the right. The authors explain all the caveats.


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## anthrotex (Oct 24, 2011)

I'm the opposite. I didn't apply myself in high school and my anxiety kept me from finishing out a semester in my young twenties. Now I'm in my late twenties and making all A's.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

odd_one_out said:


> I checked the reference to the statement that both fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystallised intelligence (Gc) peak at age 26, because it didn't look right, and found it to be false. (Wiki people didn't appear to carefully read what they cited).


Thanks. I looked at the pdf through my university library very briefly. If you look on page p.132 (table 9), I'm guessing that they pulled that peak at 26 years old from there because the authors do list that "*Broad Cognitive Ability*" peaks at ~ 26 years old. I was too lazy to read all of it but I'm guessing this ability is some combination of the different types of intelligence?


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## odd_one_out (Aug 22, 2006)

They say the broad cognitive ability variable is taken by averaging seven of the composite scores - in fluid reasoning (Gf), comprehension-knowledge (Gc), long-term retrieval, short-term memory, processing speed, auditory processing, and visual processing.

With the value of 26, it _is_ possible the ones who presented it wrongly were only talking about the broad cognitive variable and mistakenly assumed it consisted only of Gf and Gc. The way they write the sentence also makes it look like they're saying Gf and Gc do the same thing with age.


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## sanspants08 (Oct 21, 2008)

Kon said:


> Maybe this explains why so many scientists/physicists become philosophers of their respective fields as they age? Personally, I'm just completely bored of my field. I can't stand the medical sciences. I can't believe I went into them. And I've become very interested/obsessed about philosophy/physics. That's all I read, even at work. The problem is that I don't keep up with the latest stuff in my field. But I still think that I'm better at understanding the material than when I was younger even though I'm probably deceiving myself. Maybe it's the better verbal/language skills due to crystallized intelligence as mentioned above?


This is a belief I've held for a while. I feel like I have a better understanding of the knowledge in my field now that I'm older, too. My interests have moved away from psychology and are more focused on sociology nowadays. I feel like I internalize new information much more easily at this stage in life (age 33), but that feeling can be attributed to a much greater interest in the field of study, and having internal motivation for learning, rather than external motivation.

For giggles, I took the Stanford-Binet test, and ended up with a score four points lower than I had as an adolescent or a teenager, but still "high enough." I think the score would have been just the same as before, had I used any advanced math within the last 15 years :blank.

Because my mind was so confused with hormonal stuff and the need to protect myself from bodily injury as a teen, I was an underachiever. I probably would have scored much higher as a kid if I hadn't been distracted bullies and obsessed with crushes.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

I think just by analogy if our brains/minds are like other parts/organs of our body they should slowly deteriorate as we age. But I guess one may delay that process by continuing to engage in challenging cognitive tasks just like a good exercise routine/diet can delay musccle/bone loss with respect to those systems, I think. Assuming one cares, of course.


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## erasercrumbs (Dec 17, 2009)

When I was younger, I was full of ideas, most of which were terrible. Now that I'm older, I have fewer ideas, but they tend to be a lot better.


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## komorikun (Jan 11, 2009)

Kon said:


> I think just by analogy if our brains/minds are like other parts/organs of our body they should slowly deteriorate as we age. But I guess one may delay that process by continuing to engage in challenging cognitive tasks just like a good exercise routine/diet can delay musccle/bone loss with respect to those systems, I think. Assuming one cares, of course.


Supposedly being bilingual helps slow down the brain's aging process to some degree.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html



> We did two kinds of studies. In the first, published in 2004, we found that normally aging bilinguals had better cognitive functioning than normally aging monolinguals. Bilingual older adults performed better than monolingual older adults on executive control tasks. That was very impressive because it didn't have to be that way. It could have turned out that everybody just lost function equally as they got older.
> 
> That evidence made us look at people who didn't have normal cognitive function. In our next studies , we looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer's patients. On average, the bilinguals showed Alzheimer's symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn't mean that the bilinguals didn't have Alzheimer's. It meant that as the disease took root in their brains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level. They could cope with the disease for longer.


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## ivankaramazov (Aug 22, 2009)

Kon said:


> I think just by analogy if our brains/minds are like other parts/organs of our body they should slowly deteriorate as we age. But I guess one may delay that process by continuing to engage in challenging cognitive tasks just like a good exercise routine/diet can delay musccle/bone loss with respect to those systems, I think. Assuming one cares, of course.


Pretty much.

I don't feel as sharp as I did 5 years ago, but I also don't use my brain for the variety of functions that I did 5 years ago. I believe that if I were still actively learning everything I could about everything, I wouldn't feel this way. But people get older, become focused on specific areas through their careers, lose the angst/edge of the early 20s, and overall chill the f out. Chilling out can be bad for mental prowess.


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## Kon (Oct 21, 2010)

ivankaramazov said:


> But people get older, become focused on specific areas through their careers, lose the angst/edge of the early 20s, and overall chill the f out. Chilling out can be bad for mental prowess.


I think that is part of the problem. I don't think our brains/minds were designed for doing the same, repetitive tasks day after day. Most of us who get trapped in one occupation tend to use very little of our grey matter. Unfortunately most specialized jobs that can pay the bills are of that nature. Another thing, doing well in school also requires that discipline/obedience/repetition and less so, intelligence. There's this illusion, I think, that regurgitating stuff in exams or being obedient/successful in school is the best way to stimulate one's mind or do well in the real world (if that's your goal). I'm skeptical of this. I think it's a very unnatural way to learn. Probably explains the high rates of ADHD/ADD? Sitting in a classroom and being forced to study stuff that one may not be interested in for ~ 8 hours/day seems unnatural.

I've learned a lot more at times when I wasn't in school but read/studied stuff on my own. Having said that, I always was slow in using/expressing/recalling that knowledge, particularly in the real world (even when I was young). Now it's even harder. That is part of the reason for my performance anxiety. I find that I do better under a structured environment like school but I'm a total failure in the real world because of this loss in structure and predictability. I can't believe what some of my co-workers can do compared to me. It boggles my mind and surprises me that they weren't as good in school. But now, I can't even do well in school because I don't have the discipline/obedience I did when I was younger and also because my memory isn't like before. But I'm much better at seeing the "global" picture (the forest for the trees) compared to when I was younger when I was very robotic without understanding the big picture.


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