RESEARCH & EVIDENCE
ResearchOlder Brains Improve Just as Fast
Practice works the same way at 80 as at 25
A 2019 PNAS study used Lumosity data from tens of thousands of users to examine how task-switching improves with practice across the lifespan. The counterintuitive finding: older adults started at lower baseline performance, but their rate of improvement was nearly identical to younger adults. The capacity to benefit from practice appears to remain largely intact with age.
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Tracking millions of game plays from teens through 80-year-olds, the researchers found that the slope of improvement was roughly parallel across age groups. The key insight isn't that older adults outperform younger ones (they didn't), but that the gap between starting point and personal ceiling is just as accessible at every age.