We have dedicated several articles to learning about the changes that occur in us as we age. psychological level over the years. In this line, today we will see how age and general intelligence are related…
There are stereotypes or prejudices created culturally based on the age of each of us. It is easy, for example, to associate agility or speed with younger people and greater weakness and less tendency to take risks with older people.
At this point, we must bear in mind that when we talk about age, we can refer to three different types:
- Chronological age: which will be determined by the date we were born and is purely objective.
- Biological age: It is the age that our biology or organism possesses and makes certain scenarios or life circumstances possible or not. It is mainly conditioned by our genetics and innate structure as well as by the environment that surrounds us.
- Psychological age: It is that age in which we live based on our ability to adapt to the demands of the environment.
- Social age: It is the congruence in terms of behaviors, relationships and roles that we exercise with what society expects based on our chronological age.
We can see how through different and varied studies interesting relationships and conclusions have been reached regarding the intelligence general throughout the life cycle.
When carrying out these analyses, studies have been carried out transversal and longitudinalWith the first ones, it is possible to evaluate the differences between different age groups with the problem of possible contaminations to the object of study by other variables such as education, training, culture, etc. that an 18-year-old may currently receive compared to what someone who is 70 today received.
In longitudinal studies, the same group is evaluated at different times in its life cycle, but this does not free us from the appearance of biases such as the death of a subject in the studies, the objective of the study being known after several measurements, etc.
Despite these difficulties, several conclusions have been drawn from both types of studies:
- The first of them is that Verbal skills are maintained more and better than non-verbal ones.
- It has also been found that if a cognitive and educational stimulation adequate, a fairly positive level can be maintained in the performance of multiple tasks.
- It is not until 70-80 years old when the effects of age become evidentalthough it is true that there is enormous variability in this aspect from one subject to another.
Therefore, although it seems clear that at a certain age the loss of certain abilities is inevitable, starting to work with stimulation tasks from the age of 50-60 can help us to delay these details for as long as possible.