HOUSTON: Scientists have long known that our ability to think quickly and recall information, also known as fluid intelligence, peaks around age 20 and then begins a slow decline.
However, more recent findings, including a new study from neuroscientists, suggest that the real picture is much more complex. The study finds that different components of fluid intelligence peak at different ages, some as late as age 40.
Until now, it has been difficult to study how cognitive skills change over time because of the challenge of getting large numbers of people older than college students and younger than 65 to come to a psychology laboratory to participate in experiments. A broader look at aging and cognition is now possible in large-scale experiments on the Internet, where people of any age can become research subjects…