You Can Teach An Old Blogger New Tricks

From The Daily Mail:

The older you get the SMARTER you get, study says

...The study - by psychologist Lars Larsen, of Denmark's University of Aarhus - looked at 4,300 U.S. servicemen who had undergone intelligence tests when they signed up aged around 20, and again 20 years later.

Comparing the two sets of results showed that mathematical skills among the servicemen - all Vietnam veterans - appeared to remain unchanged, rather than reducing with age, while their verbal skills actually improved considerably.

Professor Larsen said his study - The Stability Of General Intelligence From Early Adulthood To Middle-Age - showed that there was not, as commonly assumed, a steady decline in brainpower from early adulthood onwards.

He said: "Verbal ability appears to keep increasing over time."

I thought it was interesting what the cause for this supposed increase in brain power was. The article waxes poetic:

As life experience grows, and we face different challenges, it is argued, we develop increasing verbal dexterity to describe our world and cope with it.

But according to Professor Larsen who did the actual study, the answer is more down-to-earth:

In the study, published in the academic journal Intelligence, the professor suggests that the improvement may simply be the result of long years of practice.

Even if you're not trying to get to Carnegie Hall.

Technorati Tag: Intelligence.