If you’re an adult of a certain age, do on-the-spot questions like “chocolate or vanilla” or “Coke or Pepsi” sometimes throw you for a loop?
If they do, it might be of some comfort to know that for adults between the ages of 20 and 60, mental speed does not slow substantially.
Heidelberg University researchers say mental speed — the time it takes us to make an on-the-spot decision — does not decline until our later years.
The German researchers reviewed data from an online experiment that involved more than a million people. They found that the speed of cognitive processing stays mostly stable between the ages of 20 and 60, with only slight decreases after about age 50.
Their findings challenge the commonly held notion that our mental speed begins its decline in early adulthood.
The researchers used data from an American study on implicit biases, in which subjects pressed a button to sort photos of people into categories of “white” or “black” and words into the categories of “good” or “bad.”
The researchers focused only on the subjects’ ages and how long it took them to make their decisions.
While test subjects’ response times did rise to some degree with age, the researchers were able to show that age was not the driving force. Older test subjects tended to be more cautious and intent on not making mistakes, and for the oldest, motor skills were at play: It simply took them longer to press the right button.
So the next time you’re stumped by a restaurant hostess’ question about whether you’d like to sit indoors or outside, rest assured that it’s likely not a function of your age or a sign of lost faculties. It’s just a normal part of being an adult.