Article December 11, 1989 Issue

Second Thought

Looking again at news and commentary

The German Research Service

"Still plenty of scope for the mind in old age"

"The ideas generally held on mental development in old age need to be corrected. Contrary to the popular cliché mental capacity does not generally diminish with increasing age. ... This is the state of the art as summed up by a team of researchers headed by Professor Paul B. Baltes of the ... [Max Planck Institute for Educational Research] in Berlin, in a book entitled Human development and the life course. ... Recent longitudinal studies, during which a relatively large group of persons was observed for many years, confirm the researchers' findings. Intelligence tests involving individuals in their 60's and 70's offered no particular evidence of loss of intelligence. ...

"The results of new memory tests suggest that indeed the elderly can boast of a quality which has been known since time immemorial as 'wisdom.' In problems involving the retention of 'overall concepts' rather than isolated details, the older persons outclassed the younger ones."

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