Older people take time to process information because their brains are already full of data collected over many years, a study by Tübingen University Germany claims.
The researchers said that the older generation takes time to recall simple facts due to the large amount of knowledge present in their brains and not because of cognitive decline.
For the study, the researchers used computers to determine cognitive development with age. They developed computer models that mimicked memory recall in humans. The computer model was made to learn new words and commands on a daily basis. They found that the models, that had less information in their memory banks (younger people), were able to recollect information quickly than those with full of data (older people), Examiner reports.
This finding is also relevant to human beings.
"What does this finding mean for our understanding of our ageing minds, for example older adults' increased difficulties with word recall? These are traditionally thought to reveal how our memory for words deteriorates with age, but Big Data adds a twist to this idea," Dr. Michael Ramscar said in a press release.
"Technology now allows researchers to make quantitative estimates about the number of words an adult can be expected to learn across a lifetime, enabling the team to separate the challenge that increasing knowledge poses to memory from the actual performance of memory itself."
Taking an example, Ramscar said that if a person can memorize and recall birthdays of two people, it doesn't mean that he/she has a good memory when compared to person who knows the birthdays of 2000 people, but can correctly remember nine times out of ten?".
Topics in Cognitive Science, Editors Wayne Gray and Thomas Hills said, "It is time we rethink what we mean by the aging mind before our false assumptions result in decisions and policies that marginalize the old or waste precious public resources to remediate problems that do not exist."
