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It's Not Memory Loss - Older Minds May Just Be Fuller of Information
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Benedict Carey writes in the NYT that the idea that the brain slows with age is one of the strongest in all of psychology. But a new paper suggests that older adults' performance on cognitive tests reflects the predictable consequences of learning on information-processing, and not cognitive decline. A team of linguistic researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany used advanced learning models to search enormous databases of words and phrases. Since educated older people generally know more words than younger people, simply by virtue of having been around longer, the experiment simulates what an older brain has to do to retrieve a word. When the researchers incorporated that difference into the models, the aging 'deficits' largely disappeared. That is to say, the larger the library you have in your head, the longer it usually takes to find a particular word (or pair). 'What shocked me, to be honest, is that for the first half of the time we were doing this project, I totally bought into the idea of age-related cognitive decline in healthy adults,' says lead author Michael Ramscar but the simulations 'fit so well to human data that it slowly forced me to entertain this idea that I didn't need to invoke decline at all.' The new report will very likely add to a growing skepticism about how steep age-related decline really is. Scientists who study thinking and memory often make a broad distinction between 'fluid' and 'crystallized' intelligence. The former includes short-term memory, like holding a phone number in mind, analytical reasoning, and the ability to tune out distractions, like ambient conversation. The latter is accumulated knowledge, vocabulary and expertise. 'In essence, what Ramscar's group is arguing is that an increase in crystallized intelligence can account for a decrease in fluid intelligence,' says Zach Hambrick, In the meantime the new digital-era challenge to 'cognitive decline' can serve as a ready-made explanation for blank moments, whether senior or otherwise (PDF). 'It's not that you're slow,' says Carey. 'It's that you know so much.'"
There's a word for people like you. I can't quite recall what it is at the moment, but I know there is a word for people like you.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
And that's my experience - too many names to keep track of, too much information inflow to filter makes me forget names of people even though I recognize their faces.
The big problem with age is that your mind gets filled up with information, and it's hard to intentionally forget stuff. Sometimes it's easier to remember old stuff than new. If there only was a way to forget some bad old stuff to make room for new...
One way to improve the situation is to lower the time spent watching TV since that's a giant information feed. And lack of sleep impacts the memory capacity too.
Also realize that the human brain has evolved to be an information store and an association processor to pick out a good solution for a problem based on what seems to be insufficient data. This is of course not always a blessing - it's a curse too, and that's what causes the balance between a genius and a mad man. I would like to extend the quote by Arthur Schopenhauer: "Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." to also add "A mad man sees a target that isn't there."
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
For requiring me to take a course on Victorian-era English literature as part of my engineering degree graduation requirements? By forcing me to take the course, they literally filled my brain up with useless stuff which will accelerate the onset of age-related dementia.
Jeff Hawkins pointed out that the game "twenty questions" is popular and significant. In twenty yes/no questions you can identify one million objects or concepts (2^20 = 1024*1024).
He conjectured that the reason the game isn't "twenty five questions" or any other number is that the data capacity of the human brain is about this much. By the anthropic principle, we use twenty questions because a game with any other number would be too easy or hard.
(Perhaps the game is interesting because our brains hold 2 million concepts, giving the game a 50% chance of success. While arguable, this is still predicts a range of "about a million" concepts for the fully loaded brain.)
This number (and the conjecture) has stuck with me. The idea that you can build a culturally literate mind - with the ability to understand a political speech, read a newspaper article, apply for a job - would take an understanding of only about a million concepts.
I accept there is a correlation between test results and perceived IQ, but since the very definition of intelligence is already controversial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Definitions) and tests are probably applied most of the time to measure younger people (career planning etc.), and also the time spent on a single test is very limited, it seems quite conceivable to me that some people might be good at solving more complex real live (common sense: display higher intelligence) while they suck at short tasks. From personal experience (older colleagues) I'd say there is a bias towards this type of people in older people.
Trolling is a art!
Its hard to dig up a single nugget from under under that pile of tailings I've accumulated over the years.
It's okay; you can blurt it out in three or so days when the article is re-posted.
I keep a notes pointer on both sides. I have a Redundant Array of Independent Wrists.
We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
I play Scrabble.
Both in my native language (Estonian) and in English.
I am much much MUCH faster in English Scrabble than in Estonian one. I believe the reason to be the same. Picking a word from my limited English vocab is fast. Working through all resources of my native language takes time.
As a result, I can beat most native English speakers in a timed game simply because of my speed, whereas my native Scrabble skills are mediocre at best.
I saw this once on a t-shirt:
"I really do know it all.
I just can't remember it all at once."
I'll be 61 in a few weeks, and I don't know it all yet. But I'm close, really close now!