"At almost any given age, most of us are getting better at some things and worse at others," Joshua Hartshorne, an MIT cognitive¹ science researcher and the lead author of a study looking at how intelligence changes as we age, told Business Insider.

 

乔舒亚·哈茨霍恩是麻省理工学院认知科学研究员，他主导了一项关于衰老与智力变化关系的研究。他告诉商业内幕网：“几乎在每个特定的年龄，大多数人会对某些事变得更擅长，而在某些事上开始走下坡路。”

 

The team behind that study quizzed thousands of people aged² 10-90 on their ability to do things like remember lists of words, recognize faces, learn names, and do math. Their results suggest that no matter your age, there's almost always a new peak on the horizon.

 

18岁：大脑信息处理和细节记忆综合能力的巅峰

 

Scientists use a test called Digit³ Symbol Substitution to assess everything from dementia to brain damage. It requires people to use a number of cognitive skills at once — including processing speed, sustained attention, and visual skills. The tool, which typically involves pairing numbers with symbols, is also part of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, one of the most widely used measures of intelligence.

 

Hartshorne employed the test in his study of how intelligence changes over time and found that participants' performance generally peaked in their late teens.

 

22岁：对陌生名字记忆能力的巅峰

 

Most adults are bad at memorizing bits of information without context, a phenomenon that neuroscientists chock up to the Baker⁴/Baker paradox⁵. A classic example of this idea is that you'll have an easier time remembering a story about someone who bakes than a person with the last name Baker. Because there's no context that links the person to the name, it doesn't become firmly lodged⁶ in your memory.

 

Young people don't appear to be as saddled by this issue, though -- a 2011 study found that humans are best at learning new names in our early 20s.

 

32岁：面部识别能力的巅峰

 

The human brain has a remarkable⁷ capacity to recognize and identify faces, and scientists are just beginning to learn why. On average, we know that our ability to learn and remember new faces appears to peak shortly after our 30th birthday.

 

43岁：专注力的巅峰

 

Having trouble focusing? A 2015 study from researchers at Harvard University and the Boston Attention and Learning Laboratory suggests that our ability to sustain attention improves with age, reaching its peak around age 43.

 

"While younger adults may excel in the speed and flexibility⁸ of information processing, adults approaching their mid-years may have the greatest capacity to remain focused," Joe DeGutis, one of the study's lead authors, said in a statement.

 

48岁：最善于识别他人的情绪

 

Dating is tough. One of the reasons could be that we're generally bad at reading other people's emotions until we reach our late 40s. That's according to one component⁹ of Hartshorne's study, which involved showing thousands of people images of faces cropped tightly around the eye area. Participants were asked to describe the emotion the person in the photo was feeling. Performance peaked for people aged around 48.

 

50岁：基本算数能力的巅峰

 

Many people believe that their math skills go down the drain after they leave school and stop practicing arithmetic. But the next time you try to split up a check, keep this in mind: your ability to do basic subtraction¹⁰ and division doesn't reach its apex¹¹ until your 50th birthday.

 

67岁：词汇能力巅峰

 

Ever wonder why you always lose at Scrabble? Good news: Your best days may be ahead. According to people's scores on multiple-choice vocabulary tests, most of us don't reach our peak wordsmith-ing abilities until we're in our late 60s or early 70s.

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