The Mental Strengths 80-Year-Olds Possess Might Surprise You

In this election year, 80-year-old and nearly 80-year-old presidential candidates have been scrutinized about their memory lapses, their advanced age and declining mental faculties. But some psychologists and neuroscientists contend that many 80-year-olds have mental strengths that can't be matched by the younger set.

Alan Swope, an emeritus professor of psychology at Alliant International University in San Francisco, says "Older individuals can outperform younger people on tests of intelligence that are based on accumulated knowledge and experience."

What other strengths does an 80-year-old possess cognitively?

Swope cites Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist and author, who noted that some aspects of memory actually improve with age. "For instance, our ability to extract patterns, regularities and make accurate predictions improve over time because we've had more experience," Levitin notes.

Swope refers to a whole category of octogenarians as "cognitive super agers" who show minimal or no age-related mental decline. "They have thicker brain regions associated with memory, as well as other advantages," he suggests. These advantages are based on "genetic factors, education, medical treatment, beneficial living arrangements and good relationships."

Demographically, of people aged 80 to 89 in the U.S., about 24% show signs of early dementia, Swope noted, which means 3 of 4 octogenarians are mentally capable, to varying levels.

Then why do we hear and read constantly about people in their 80s suffering from mental and cognitive lapses? Swope attributes these fallacies to old-fashioned "stereotyping and an ageist prejudice. As with other forms of stereotyping, it's an unsupported generalization that makes it impossible to perceive the actual mental abilities of an individual." 

Swope says many octogenarians shine at performing "comprehensive overviews and tasks which require a great storehouse of information."

Research has found that "there is little, if any decline, in older ages, in knowledge and crystallizing intelligence," explains Yochai Shavit, the director of research at the Stanford Center on Longevity, a research center that works with 150 Stanford University faculty on opportunities created by increased longevity. 

People in their eighties who have "great knowledge and experience in doing something can serve to fill the gap when [the individuals] aren't able to learn quickly," he noted. Fluid learning, which researchers describe as learning new things, tends to "peak by contrast in early adulthood then decline somewhat with advanced age," Shavit says.

According to Shavit, many octogenarians supplant younger people in cognitive testing with regards "to bringing their knowledge, experience and context into specific situations to make wise decisions." 

Indeed many 80-year-olds outperform people 50 and 60 years-old in certain cognitive tests. For example, Shavit mentions a test where people are asked to name as many animals as they can in 90 seconds. 

"Older adults consistently and very robustly outperform college students because they have the richness of their semantic network, the links between words, and the strength of connection between words and concepts that improve with experience," he notes.

Shavit noted that researcher Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, has investigated social emotional selectivity theory, which suggests that as people get older, they focus more on remaining in the current moment, which benefits them in several ways. 

The many 80-year-olds who are considered "sharp as a tack," in the vernacular, tend to have education, often higher education, in common, and tend to stay cognitively stimulated, challenged and engaged, such as attorneys or professors who work well into their 80s. It's harder by contrast to stay intellectually stimulated with factory jobs or service jobs, Shavit adds.

Swope refers to Brooklyn-based Ashton Applewhite, who wrote the book "The Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism." Her research reveals that older adults have easier access to more information, their attention span gradually expands, and because of their worldview and experience, they manage their emotions better than many younger people and are therefore more resilient. 

"[Many] older adults are better at controlling emotions and are better at using emotions to inform important decisions," concludes Swope.

Applewhite is most disturbed by people who lump all 80-year-olds together, thinking that all of them are faltering in their mental ability. In Applewhite's view, "If you have seen one 80-year-old, you have seen one of them. The longer we live, the more different from one another we become."

She refers to considering all 80-year-olds together as a "stereotype, which is ill-informed because we age at different rates. The older the person, the less their age tells about them." 

Yet 80-year-olds can fumble to remember a name or confuse one person with another, so why does that happen? Applewhite acknowledges that as people age they "lose some short-term processing ability." But she adds this loss is no precursor to dementia or Alzheimer's. And Shavit notes that 20-year-olds forget names and connections, but aren't lambasted for forgetfulness, another example of sheer ageism.

Asked if octogenarians make better judgments in their decision-making based on their accumulated experience, Applewhite replies, "Some are wise; some haven't learned much along the way. It's all about what you've learned from your experience."

But many 80-year-olds can handle issues in ways that 20-year-olds can't. Octogenarians "have a longer view," Applewhite notes. "They've lived through more things, seen more situations," and don't get bent out of shape by encountering something new. 

Returning for a moment to presidential candidates, Shavit says "Talking about their age as an indication of their capacity to make tough decisions as president is mostly devoid of empirical background. There isn't any scientific reason to believe that just because of your age, you would be any less cognitively vibrant than a younger person is."