问答题 When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. 1 Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, Progress in Brain Research.
Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer"s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. 2 But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful. "It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing," said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. "It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind."
For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults who are 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. 3 Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it. 4 When both groups were later asked questions for which the out-of-place words might be answers, the older adults responded much better than the students.
"For the young people, it"s as if the distraction never happened," said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. "But for older adults, because they"ve retained all this extra data they"re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they"ve soaked up from one situation to another."
5 Such tendencies can yield big advantages in the real world where it is not always clear what information is important, or will become important. A seemingly irrelevant point or suggestion in a memo can take on new meaning if the original plan changes. Or extra details that stole your attention, like others, yawning and fidgeting, may help you assess the speaker"s real impact.
【正确答案】
【答案解析】反而,这方面的研究发现,老化的大脑只不过为了长期的好处,在采集更多的数据并且尽力地检索混乱的信息。
【正确答案】
【答案解析】但是,作者认为,对于大多数老年人而言,由于注意广度在逐渐加宽,因而他们很难锁定单一的信息,比如姓名或电话号码。
【正确答案】
【答案解析】虽然这些学生们不顾这些不恰当词语的意义,费力、匀速地读完了原文,但是老人们在读到与当前主题相关的词语时,却降低了阅读速度。
【正确答案】
【答案解析】之后当两组被试者被问及用这些不恰当词语作答的问题时,老年人的反应要比大学生好的多。
【正确答案】
【答案解析】这种趋势在现实世界中能带来很多好处,在现实世界中,人们不清楚什么信息是重要的,或者什么信息会很重要。