Don't Let Expectations Get In The Way of Staying Sharp

An obvious but overlooked way to stretch your mind as you get older: don't give up on challenging tasks.

Aging adults can find themselves “embedded in cultural expectations about aging,” (University of Illinois Professor Elizabeth) Stine-Morrow said. “They buy into cultural stereotypes of diminished cognitive capacity.”

(According to Stine-Morrow) they may shy away from intellectual challenges, and in the process possibly hasten a real decline.

Reinforcing the point, she says "Effort is a good thing; effort doesn’t mean you’re deficient ... It’s just the nature of cognition that it requires effort. Every time you allocate effort, it increases your capacity to do that thing in the future. And that becomes even more important as we get older.”

Stine-Morrow's research, discussed in this article, focuses on how older adults compensate for changes in cognition by adjusting how they perform tasks like reading. Better readers make changes to their technique as they age, and these improvements can be taught to others.