We can’t avoid road construction zones. They are ubiquitous. New road construction, resurfacing projects, and altered road designs are the nuisances of driving. “Gosh, when will they finish this project? Why are those guys just standing around? Couldn’t they get this done faster; the backups are terrible.”
We negotiate the turns on the rough and temporary lanes, and we do so with nary an accident, even when lanes are narrowed by Jersey barriers that eliminate the berm. We might especially note that truck drivers seem to deftly steer their 18-wheelers through the zones just a foot or so from those barriers and adjacent travelers. We can also imagine that while they drive, truckers do what we do in our cars: Listen to music or talk radio or carry on a conversation. Maybe they even listen to both radio and CB, doing so without wrecking. Ah! The cognitive ability of the human adult! Even an older adult!
And of older adults, one in particular comes to mind, not a truck driver, but a kicker/quarterback, George Blanda, one time Oakland Raider. To me, a Pittsburgh fan, Blanda was that silver-and-black Raider nemesis of the gold-and-black Steelers. Blanda played professional football for 26 seasons, the last nine with the Raiders. I recall his entering games in the fourth quarter and leading his team downfield successfully, and then, as at that time the all-time leading scorer, kicking the extra point. What intrigued me in watching him is how deftly he led his team, steering them through what was at that time one of the NFL’s greatest defenses with barriers like Mean Joe Green and the rest of the “Steel Curtain.”
Should we all be disheartened by a recent study that shows cognitive ability decreases in the fourth decade of life? * Or should we be heartened by that same study that shows 35-year-olds of the 21st century are a bit sharper in chess than 35-year-olds of a century ago? Declining? Yes, but less so and at an older age.
So, here I am, past 35 by a few years, more recently by 42 years, and, if the researchers are right, certainly on the decline. What was I saying? Oh! Yes, I’m on the downslope of cognitive ability, at least as determined by an experiment involving the game of chess. The researchers argue that unlike predecessor generations, the current generations have had to deal with a more complex, and therefore a more mentally demanding world involving what is commonly called multitasking. And although they don’t use the word multitasking, they probably mean as much. Driving an oxcart down a dirt path is nowhere near the challenge of driving an 18-wheeler through a construction zone while listening to a CB and a radio or walking down a store aisle with hundreds of colorful products, background music, and the traffic of shopping carts, while reading a text from a spouse about bread, milk, AND eggs. Yes, we have busy minds, not necessarily wise ones, but definitely busy—and busier than those who lived centuries ago. So, if mental exercise is the key to staving off mental decline, well, we do it whether we want to or not in a world of constant distraction and task.
Of course, we know that experience often makes up for the cognitive decline in patterned behaviors—and I call chess a patterned behavior. Experienced chess players know the game because the same part of the brain that helps us to identify faces is that part of the brain that sees a chess board’s ‘face’ as defined by the emplacement of the pieces. Chess players recognize movements made by opponents because they have seen such movements. Nevertheless, the masters of chess do retire, giving way to the cognitively more adept younger players.
But I’m drawn to comment about the bias some have toward the thinking of ‘older’ people, the bias against ideas just because they are the product of older minds. Here’s a personal example: I had devised a plan at the university where I worked for tying research to local industry and government, and I managed to persuade the administration to consider the plan. It had the potential to bring in millions of dollars in research while providing many students, both graduate and undergraduate, with practical internships and avenues into jobs. Anyway, into a meeting on the plan attended by colleagues who were over 35, nay, over 50, walked an “I’m-an-obviously-busy-and-more-important-because-my-job-new-director-of-university-development,” a guy who had joined the university’s management team about a month earlier at a relatively high salary. He came in late, by the way. We had to await his arrival.
When he sat down, he started to listen inattentively and then interrupted, saying, “What we need at this university are more young minds with more fresh thoughts.” That was about it; no exchange of ideas, no detailed analysis. Because the meeting centered on a thought from an “old mind,” it was, in his mind, unworthy of pursuit. The plan essentially died on the spot, so I merely went forward over the ensuing years with research for my own students and with my departmental colleagues. The university lost what I believe was an opportunity because my colleagues and I were perceived to be ‘old minds.’
Undeniably, cognitive skills decline, but wisdom often increases. So, yes, your reactions will slow with age as does your ability to play chess against a younger mind, but your ability to think creatively is mostly limited by the amount of mental energy you intend to put into an endeavor and by the way you connect the dots of experience and knowledge. The experience of an old(er) truck driver who has driven through unnumbered road construction sites on the highways of his career is what keeps his truck in the lane through a bottleneck of pylons and concrete barriers next to a wavering passenger car filled with teenagers. True, at the truck stop diner, he might lose a game of chess to a younger truck driver, but that doesn’t prevent me from thinking I’m safer driving beside the more experienced driver in that narrow construction zone.
Before I leave you to your reveries, I would like to mention something pointed out by Morris Bishop in his book on the Middle Ages. Bishop addresses the issue of the Dark Ages, that period after the fall of Rome and the short-lived renaissance associated with Charlemagne in the ninth century or with Alfred the Great in that same century. We might tend to think people of those “dark” centuries were somehow lacking cognitive skills. Bishop ascribes the “darkness” not to cognitive ability but rather to “incuriosity.” He writes, “Men were not ignorant of the things they needed to know—practical agriculture, weaponmaking, the strategies of survival, and they had no interest in rediscovering the speculation of ancient sages.”** I have played chess—badly, I confess. I never studied the game. I never practiced. If my skill as a chess player is wanting, it’s largely because I had little interest in playing the game. But I’ll grant that good chess players definitely exhibit in their playing some cognitive skills far greater than mine. Yet, I wonder whether or not those same chess players could have survived as well as many who lived in relative ignorance when very few people even knew how to read during the Dark Ages. People devote their cognitive abilities to whatever they deem to be important.
Cognitive ability has always been important. Is it, according to the authors of the study, generally greater today and longer lasting because our brains are busier than our predecessors’ brains? Maybe. However, regardless of the findings of the researchers which might or might not be applicable to everyday life, we cannot discount that what we lose in reaction time we gain in strategy. Lesson? “Don’t take for granted old truckers or old quarterbacks,” I’m inclined to say, thinking of Tom Brady and Drew Brees in 2020. But more importantly, don’t take yourself for granted if you happen to be, as they say, on the downside of life.
What do you think?
* Strittmatter, Anthony, Uwe Sunde, Dainis Zegners. Life cycle patterns of cognitive performance over the long run. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Oct 2020, 202006653; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.20066531 Online at PNAS https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/10/13/2006653117 Accessed October 22, 2020.
**Bishop, Morris, The Middle Ages. New York. American Heritage Press. 1970. P. 261.
We negotiate the turns on the rough and temporary lanes, and we do so with nary an accident, even when lanes are narrowed by Jersey barriers that eliminate the berm. We might especially note that truck drivers seem to deftly steer their 18-wheelers through the zones just a foot or so from those barriers and adjacent travelers. We can also imagine that while they drive, truckers do what we do in our cars: Listen to music or talk radio or carry on a conversation. Maybe they even listen to both radio and CB, doing so without wrecking. Ah! The cognitive ability of the human adult! Even an older adult!
And of older adults, one in particular comes to mind, not a truck driver, but a kicker/quarterback, George Blanda, one time Oakland Raider. To me, a Pittsburgh fan, Blanda was that silver-and-black Raider nemesis of the gold-and-black Steelers. Blanda played professional football for 26 seasons, the last nine with the Raiders. I recall his entering games in the fourth quarter and leading his team downfield successfully, and then, as at that time the all-time leading scorer, kicking the extra point. What intrigued me in watching him is how deftly he led his team, steering them through what was at that time one of the NFL’s greatest defenses with barriers like Mean Joe Green and the rest of the “Steel Curtain.”
Should we all be disheartened by a recent study that shows cognitive ability decreases in the fourth decade of life? * Or should we be heartened by that same study that shows 35-year-olds of the 21st century are a bit sharper in chess than 35-year-olds of a century ago? Declining? Yes, but less so and at an older age.
So, here I am, past 35 by a few years, more recently by 42 years, and, if the researchers are right, certainly on the decline. What was I saying? Oh! Yes, I’m on the downslope of cognitive ability, at least as determined by an experiment involving the game of chess. The researchers argue that unlike predecessor generations, the current generations have had to deal with a more complex, and therefore a more mentally demanding world involving what is commonly called multitasking. And although they don’t use the word multitasking, they probably mean as much. Driving an oxcart down a dirt path is nowhere near the challenge of driving an 18-wheeler through a construction zone while listening to a CB and a radio or walking down a store aisle with hundreds of colorful products, background music, and the traffic of shopping carts, while reading a text from a spouse about bread, milk, AND eggs. Yes, we have busy minds, not necessarily wise ones, but definitely busy—and busier than those who lived centuries ago. So, if mental exercise is the key to staving off mental decline, well, we do it whether we want to or not in a world of constant distraction and task.
Of course, we know that experience often makes up for the cognitive decline in patterned behaviors—and I call chess a patterned behavior. Experienced chess players know the game because the same part of the brain that helps us to identify faces is that part of the brain that sees a chess board’s ‘face’ as defined by the emplacement of the pieces. Chess players recognize movements made by opponents because they have seen such movements. Nevertheless, the masters of chess do retire, giving way to the cognitively more adept younger players.
But I’m drawn to comment about the bias some have toward the thinking of ‘older’ people, the bias against ideas just because they are the product of older minds. Here’s a personal example: I had devised a plan at the university where I worked for tying research to local industry and government, and I managed to persuade the administration to consider the plan. It had the potential to bring in millions of dollars in research while providing many students, both graduate and undergraduate, with practical internships and avenues into jobs. Anyway, into a meeting on the plan attended by colleagues who were over 35, nay, over 50, walked an “I’m-an-obviously-busy-and-more-important-because-my-job-new-director-of-university-development,” a guy who had joined the university’s management team about a month earlier at a relatively high salary. He came in late, by the way. We had to await his arrival.
When he sat down, he started to listen inattentively and then interrupted, saying, “What we need at this university are more young minds with more fresh thoughts.” That was about it; no exchange of ideas, no detailed analysis. Because the meeting centered on a thought from an “old mind,” it was, in his mind, unworthy of pursuit. The plan essentially died on the spot, so I merely went forward over the ensuing years with research for my own students and with my departmental colleagues. The university lost what I believe was an opportunity because my colleagues and I were perceived to be ‘old minds.’
Undeniably, cognitive skills decline, but wisdom often increases. So, yes, your reactions will slow with age as does your ability to play chess against a younger mind, but your ability to think creatively is mostly limited by the amount of mental energy you intend to put into an endeavor and by the way you connect the dots of experience and knowledge. The experience of an old(er) truck driver who has driven through unnumbered road construction sites on the highways of his career is what keeps his truck in the lane through a bottleneck of pylons and concrete barriers next to a wavering passenger car filled with teenagers. True, at the truck stop diner, he might lose a game of chess to a younger truck driver, but that doesn’t prevent me from thinking I’m safer driving beside the more experienced driver in that narrow construction zone.
Before I leave you to your reveries, I would like to mention something pointed out by Morris Bishop in his book on the Middle Ages. Bishop addresses the issue of the Dark Ages, that period after the fall of Rome and the short-lived renaissance associated with Charlemagne in the ninth century or with Alfred the Great in that same century. We might tend to think people of those “dark” centuries were somehow lacking cognitive skills. Bishop ascribes the “darkness” not to cognitive ability but rather to “incuriosity.” He writes, “Men were not ignorant of the things they needed to know—practical agriculture, weaponmaking, the strategies of survival, and they had no interest in rediscovering the speculation of ancient sages.”** I have played chess—badly, I confess. I never studied the game. I never practiced. If my skill as a chess player is wanting, it’s largely because I had little interest in playing the game. But I’ll grant that good chess players definitely exhibit in their playing some cognitive skills far greater than mine. Yet, I wonder whether or not those same chess players could have survived as well as many who lived in relative ignorance when very few people even knew how to read during the Dark Ages. People devote their cognitive abilities to whatever they deem to be important.
Cognitive ability has always been important. Is it, according to the authors of the study, generally greater today and longer lasting because our brains are busier than our predecessors’ brains? Maybe. However, regardless of the findings of the researchers which might or might not be applicable to everyday life, we cannot discount that what we lose in reaction time we gain in strategy. Lesson? “Don’t take for granted old truckers or old quarterbacks,” I’m inclined to say, thinking of Tom Brady and Drew Brees in 2020. But more importantly, don’t take yourself for granted if you happen to be, as they say, on the downside of life.
What do you think?
* Strittmatter, Anthony, Uwe Sunde, Dainis Zegners. Life cycle patterns of cognitive performance over the long run. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Oct 2020, 202006653; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.20066531 Online at PNAS https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/10/13/2006653117 Accessed October 22, 2020.
**Bishop, Morris, The Middle Ages. New York. American Heritage Press. 1970. P. 261.
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