BEAUTIFUL MINDS
When Does
Intelligence Peak?
Maybe that’s not even the right question
W
hen does cognitive functioning peak? As
we get older, we certainly feel as though
our intelligence is rapidly declining. (Well,
at least I do!) However, the nitty-gritty research on
the topic suggests some really interesting nuance.
As a recent paper notes, “Not only is there no age
at which humans are performing at peak on all
cognitive tasks, there may not be an age at which
humans perform at peak on most cognitive tasks.”
In one large series of studies, Joshua Harts-
horne and Laura Germine presented evidence
from 48,537 people from standardized IQ and
memory tests. The results revealed that process-
ing speed and short-term memory for family pic-
tures and stories peak and begin to decline
around high school graduation; some visual-spa-
tial and abstract reasoning abilities plateau in ear-
ly adulthood, beginning to decline in the 30s; and
still other cognitive functions such as vocabulary
and general information do not peak until people
reach their 40s or later.
THE DARK MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE
The picture gets even more complicated, however,
once we take into account the “dark matter” of
intelligence. As Phillip Ackerman of the Georgia
Instutite of Technology points out, should we really
be judging adult intelligence by the same standardwe judge childhood intelligence? At what point
does the cognitive potential of youth morph into the
specialized expertise of adulthood?
In the intelligence field, there is a distinction
between “fluid” intelligence (indexed by tests of
abstract reasoning and pattern detection) andScott Barry Kaufman is a psychologist at Barnard College,
Columbia University, exploring intelligence, creativity,
personality and well-being. He hosts The Psychology Podcast,
and is author and/or editor of eight books, including Wired to
Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (with
Carolyn Gregoire) and Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined.FRAN POLITOGETTY IMAGESOpinion