• Mental speed hardly changes over a lifes

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Fri Feb 18 21:30:46 2022
    Mental speed hardly changes over a lifespan
    Study shows that the speed of cognitive information processing remains
    largely stable over decades

    Date:
    February 18, 2022
    Source:
    Heidelberg University
    Summary:
    Mental speed -- the speed at which we can deal with issues requiring
    rapid decision-making -- does not change substantially over decades.

    Psychologists have come to this conclusion. They evaluated
    data from a large-scale online experiment with over a million
    participants. The findings of the new study suggest that the speed
    of cognitive information processing remains largely stable between
    the ages of 20 and 60, and only deteriorates at higher ages.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== Mental speed -- the speed at which we can deal with issues requiring
    rapid decision-making -- does not change substantially over
    decades. Psychologists at Heidelberg University have come to this
    conclusion. Under the leadership of Dr Mischa von Krause and Dr Stefan
    Radev, they evaluated data from a large-scale online experiment with
    over a million participants. The findings of the new study suggest that
    the speed of cognitive information processing remains largely stable
    between the ages of 20 and 60, and only deteriorates at higher ages. The Heidelberg researchers have hereby called into question the assumption
    to date that mental speed starts to decline already in early adulthood.


    ==========================================================================
    "The common assumption is that the older we get, the more slowly we react
    to external stimuli. If that were so, mental speed would be fastest at
    the age of about twenty and would then decline with increasing age,"
    says Dr von Krause, a researcher in the Quantitative Research Methods department headed by Prof. Dr Andreas Voss at Heidelberg University's
    Institute of Psychology. In order to verify this theory, the researchers reevaluated data from a large-scale American study on implicit biases. In
    the online experiment with over a million participants, subjects had to
    press a button to sort pictures of people into the categories "white" or "black" and words into the categories "good" or "bad." According to Dr
    von Krause, the content focus was of minor importance in the Heidelberg
    study. Instead, the researchers used the large batch of data as an example
    of a response-time task to measure the duration of cognitive decisions.

    When evaluating the data, Dr von Krause and his colleagues noted that, on average, the response times of the test subjects rose with increasing age.

    However, with the aid of a mathematical model, they were able to show
    that this phenomenon was not due to changes in mental speed. "Instead,
    we think that older test subjects are mainly slower because they reply
    more cautiously and concentrate more on avoiding mistakes," Mischa von
    Krause explains. At the same time, motor execution speed slows down during
    the course of adult life: older participants in the experiment needed
    longer to press the appropriate key after they had found the right answer.

    Another finding of the study was that average information processing
    speed only progressively declined with participants over the age of
    60. "It looks as though, in the course of our life, we don't need to
    fear any substantial losses of mental speed -- particularly not in the
    course of a typical working life," says Mischa von Krause. "Generally
    speaking, we should also note that the test subjects in all age groups
    included individuals with high and low mental speeds. Our results relate
    to the average trend." The German Research Foundation (DFG) funded the research work in the context of the research training group for doctoral students "Statistical Modelling in Psychology" (GRK 2277). The results
    were published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

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    always get wrong about diet and exercise. Claim_yours_now_>>> ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Heidelberg_University. Note: Content
    may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Mischa von Krause, Stefan T. Radev, Andreas Voss. Mental speed
    is high
    until age 60 as revealed by analysis of over a million participants.

    Nature Human Behaviour, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01282-7 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220218153047.htm

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