Not all intelligence declines after 30 years
It is usual to think that all human capacities decline with age past thirty , and that intelligence is not an exception to this rule. However, it seems that this is not entirely true and does not always happen with all cognitive abilities equally.
We can believe this, among other things, because a team of researchers has found indications that certain aspects of intelligence reach their peak once youth has passed, while others do so much earlier, around the age of 20.
The thousand faces of intelligence
Although we all tend to associate the concept "intelligence "al set of skills that are put into practice when completing the famous CI test , more and more layers are found in what could seem a rigid and monolithic definition. There has been talk, for example, of emotional intelligence and multiple intelligences, conceptions of intelligence that go far beyond what is measured through the classic sheets on which the correct answer must be pointed out. One of these interesting twists in the idea of intellect has been the proposal of two kinds of cognitive skills: those that shape fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence.
These different ways of classifying the types of intelligence is not free: they are theoretical models that try to explain deep processes that occur in our brain and, therefore, our way of thinking. That's why it's interesting when you find evidence that different types of intelligence evolve differently. In this sense, an article published in the Journal of Applied Psychology points out that, while fluid intelligence (that is, the one associated with the successful resolution of new problems) begins to decline in the third decade of life, crystallized intelligence, related to the management of what has already been learned, continues to improve with the age until it is reached, in some cases, at 70 years or more.
The experiment
For this research, a group of 3,375 volunteers between 20 and 74 years of age with a professional profile of an executive level was used. As the research was focused on the evaluation of the skills linked to the work environment, these people filled a battery of questions related to certain professional skills, creativity and style of management and administration. In addition, of all this, they were given a test on fluid and crystallized intelligence and the skills associated with each of them.
To measure each of these modalities, the tests proposed exercises related to the logical and analytical capacity to measure fluid intelligence (such as following a series of letters), while crystallized intelligence was evaluated from tasks related to verbal ability .
After analyzing the collected data, the researchers saw that Older people showed scores in fluid intelligence significantly lower than those of people under 30 , especially after the fifties. However, in the tasks of verbal ability associated with crystallized intelligence the trend was reversed: the average of scores that corresponded to the group of greater age was higher.
Although this is not the only study that describes these trends in the evolution of these types of intelligence, it is one of the few that focuses on the professional context. Research in this line could be useful when it comes to knowing what kind of tasks are easier to solve in one or another age group, with beneficial results for both the person and the working group in which they are.
Of course, both types of intelligence decline with age , what happens is that they do it in a different way and from a different moment of maturity. It makes sense that it is so. Fluid intelligence is especially useful for adapting to relatively new environments that are not well adapted and that can still cause unforeseen events due to the individual's little experience. Crystallized intelligence, however, has a more conservative application, linked to the resolution of problems from what is already known.
These two types of abilities unfold in different stages, and our brain seems to be able to adapt to these stages by adjusting to what is expected of it. Somehow, it seems as if evolution aspires to make us as wise as she .
Bibliographic references:
- Klein, R. M., Dilchert, S., Ones, D. S. and Dages, K. D. (2015). Cognitive Predictors and Age-Based Adverse Impact Among Business Executives. Journal of Applied Psychology, online publication. doi: 10.1037 / a0038991
