填空题
.Jake, aged 16, has a grandmother named Rita, who is 70. They live close by, and they even take a Spanish class together twice a week at a local college. After class they sometimes stop at a cafe for a snack. On one occasion Rita tells Jake, "I think it's great how fast you pick up new grammar. It takes me a lot longer." Jake replies, "Yeah, but you don't seem to make as many silly mistakes on the quizzes as I do. How do you do that?"
At that moment, Rita and Jake stumble across an interesting set of differences between older and younger minds. Popular psychology says that as people age their brains "slow down". The implication, of course, is that elder men and women are not as mentally agile as middle-aged adults or even teenagers. However, although certain brain functions such as perception and reaction time do indeed take longer, that slowing down does not necessarily undermine mental sharpness. Indeed, evidence shows that older people are just as mentally fit as younger people because their brains compensate for some kinds of declines in creative ways that young minds do not exploit.