[MTK]

Originally Posted by mlmpetert

Yeah thats the way ive always felt, but ive never really thought about it or tried to equate old people's mental inabilities before with anything. I just look at it like "oh, their old". But obviously their not nearly as smart as they once were.

People often fear that aging will cause their intellect to disappear, giving way to cognitive impairment and irrationality. However, intellectual decline is not an inevitable consequence of aging. Research does not support the stereotypic notion of the elderly losing general cognitive functioning or that such loss, when it does occur, is necessarily disruptive. Older adults tend to learn more slowly and perform less well on tasks involving imagination and memorization than do younger adults, but what older adults may be lacking in terms of specific mental tasks, they make up for in wisdom, or expert and practical knowledge based on life experience.


Read more: Developmental Psychology: Intelligence and Memory: Age 65+ - CliffsNotes