- Passing
one’s 50th birthday often triggers a burst of creativity, experts say
- The
scientists' findings may explain the success of older achievers
- Colonel
Harland David Sanders was 65 when he founded his first KFC shop
Those of us advancing in
years may despair that we are becoming ever more easily distracted.
But passing one’s 50th
birthday often triggers a burst of creativity unparalleled in a person’s
younger years, a study suggests.
The findings may explain the
success of older achievers such as British novelist Richard Adams, who
published Watership Down at 52 after a career in the Civil Service, and
American author Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was 65 when she wrote the first of
the Little House on the Prairie books.
Men and women over 50 often
have a creative burst of energy, researchers at University of Toronto in
Canada and Harvard in the US found
Colonel Harland David Sanders
was also 65 when he founded the first of his Kentucky Fried Chicken shops –
which have gone on to become a global phenomenon.
Part of the reason older
people are seen as having poorer mental abilities than the young is that
laboratory tests on mental ability tend to involve highly-focused tasks, which
older adults find harder. But these tests often do not mirror real-life situations.
Researchers from the
University of Toronto in Canada and Harvard in the US found that being easily
distracted, as tests show older people are, can actually be a help with problem
solving and learning new information. Writing in the scientific journal Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, they looked at results from a host of studies and brain
scans.
Being able to focus tightly
on information, as some tests demand, is known to psychologists as cognitive
control.
But Toronto University
researcher Tarek Amer said some tasks benefit from a broad focus of attention –
such as creative thinking or using information that was previously considered
irrelevant.
The scientists found that men
and women over 50 were more likely to become distracted which led to creative
flourishes
‘The literature gives us the
impression that older adults are essentially doomed as their cognitive
abilities decrease,’ he said.
‘In reality, many older
adults get along just fine in their day-to-day lives, and we think that shows
that ageing adults don’t always need to have high cognitive control.’ Mr Amer
and his colleagues discovered that people with lower levels of cognitive
control found it easier to solve problems creatively, and they were better at
spotting patterns in the world around them.
This means older adults can
outperform younger counterparts on certain problem-solving tasks – as they find
it easier to broaden their attention. Most day-to-day tasks, like walking down
the street or learning new information, do not benefit from tight focus in
cognitive control, the researchers said.
Co-author Lynn Hasher, a
professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said: ‘Many of the tasks
that we study in classic cognitive psychology require high cognitive control,
but these might not accurately mirror what people do in the real world because
they limit distractions.
‘A distraction in one setting
can actually be useful information in another, and the more information you
have, the better able you’re going to be to address a current problem.’
She added: ‘We think it’s
possible that studying reduced cognitive control can help us understand how
older adults can still perform independently and successfully in their
lives.’
