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Behind all those canned compliments for older adults — spry! wily! wise! — is an appreciation for something that scientists have had a hard time characterizing: mental faculties that improve with age.
年长者通常会受到这样的褒扬：思维敏捷！老谋深算！睿智！在这些称赞的背后，是对某种东西的欣赏，科学家们一直很难描述的东西：随着年龄增长而增强的心智能力。
Knowledge is a large part of the equation, of course. People who are middle-aged and older tend to know more than young adults, by virtue of having been around longer, and score higher on vocabulary tests, crossword puzzles and other measures of so-called crystallized intelligence.
当然，在这个等式中，知识占了很大一部分。与年轻人相比，中老年人知道的东西往往更多，因为他们活过的年头更长，而且在词汇测试、填字游戏和其他“晶态智力”测试中，中老年人的得分也比较高。
Still, young adults who consult their elders (mostly when desperate) don’t do so just to gather facts, solve crosswords or borrow a credit card. Nor, generally, are they looking for help with short-term memory or puzzle solving. Those abilities, called fluid intelligence, peak in the 20s.
不过，年轻人（主要是在绝望的时候）请教年长者，不只是为了搜集事实、做填字游戏，或者借用信用卡。通常也不是为了解决短期记忆或解谜方面的问题。这些能力称为“液态智力”，在20多岁时达到峰值。
No, the older brain offers something more, according to a new paper in the journal Psychological Science. Elements of social judgment and short-term memory, important pieces of the cognitive puzzle, may peak later in life than previously thought.
不，《心理科学》(Psychological Science)杂志上的新论文表示，年长者的大脑可以提供更多的好处。社会判断和短期记忆的一些元素是认知能力的重要组成部分，它们达到峰值的时间可能比人们之前认为的更晚一些。
The postdoctoral fellows Joshua Hartshorne of M.I.T. and Laura Germine of Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed a huge trove of scores on cognitive tests taken by people of all ages. The researchers found that the broad split in age-related cognition — fluid in the young, crystallized in the old — masked several important nuances.
麻省理工(MIT)博士后约书亚·哈茨霍恩(Joshua Hartshorne)以及哈佛(Harvard)和马萨诸塞州总医院(Massachusetts General Hospital)博士后劳拉·杰米恩(Laura Germine)分析了大量由所有年龄段参加的认知测试数据，发现在涉及年龄的认知上，笼统的两分法——年轻人液态智力高，年长者晶态智力高——掩盖了一些重要的细微差别。
“This dichotomy between early peaks and later peaks is way too coarse,” Dr. Hartshorne said. “There are a lot more patterns going on, and we need to take those into account to fully understand the effects of age on cognition.”
“早期达到高峰和较晚时候达到高峰，这种两分法太粗略了，”哈茨霍恩博士说。“此外还存在很多的模式，我们需要考虑这些因素，来充分了解年龄对认知的影响。”
The new paper is hardly the first challenge to the scientific literature on age-related decline, and it won’t be the last. A year ago, German scientists argued that cognitive “deficits” in aging were caused largely by the accumulation of knowledge — that is, the brain slows down because it has to search a larger mental library of facts. That idea has stirred some debate among scientists.
诸多科学文献谈到了和年龄有关的认知能力下降，这篇新论文既不是对相关结论的第一个挑战，也不会是最后一个。一年前，德国科学家声称，年龄增长的认知“缺陷”在很大程度上是由知识的积累造成的——也就是说，大脑速度减慢，是因为它需要在一个更大的脑部信息库里搜索东西。这个说法已经在科学界引起了一些争论。
Experts said the new analysis raised a different question: Are there distinct, independent elements of memory and cognition that peak at varying times of life?
一些专家称，这份新的分析结果提出了一个不同的问题：在记忆力和认知能力中，有没有一些与众不同的独立的元素，是在生命中的不同时刻达到峰值的？
“I think they have more work to do to demonstrate that that’s the case,” said Denise Park, a professor of behavior and brain science at the University of Texas at Dallas. “But this is a provocative paper, and it’s going to have an impact on the field.”
“我认为要证明这一点，他们还需要做更多工作，”德克萨斯州大学达拉斯分校(University of Texas at Dallas)行为与脑科学教授丹尼斯·帕克(Denise Park)说。“但这篇论文已经引发了讨论，它将对这一领域产生影响。”
The strength of the new analysis is partly in its data. The study evaluated historic scores from the popular Wechsler intelligence test, and compared them with more recent results from tens of thousands of people who took short cognitive tests on the authors’ websites, testmybrain.org and gameswithwords.org. The one drawback of this approach is that, because it didn’t follow the same people over a lifetime, it might have missed the effect of different cultural experiences, said K. Warner Schaie, a researcher at Penn State University.
这个最新分析结果的强大之处，一定程度上在于它所采用的数据。这份研究评估了著名的韦氏智力测验(Wechsler intelligence test)的历史得分数据，将它们与数万人更近期的测试结果进行了比较。这些参与者在作者的网站上进行了简短的认知测试，网址分别是testmybrain.org和gameswithwords.org。宾夕法尼亚州立大学(Penn State)的研究人员K·瓦尔纳·沙依(K. Warner Schaie)说，这种方法的缺陷在于，由于它不是追踪同一批人在人生各个阶段的情况，因此可能忽视了不同文化经历产生的影响。
But most previous studies have not been nearly as large, or had such a range of ages. Participants on the websites were 10 to 89 years old, and they took a large battery of tests, measuring skills like memory for abstract symbols and strings of digits, problem solving, and facility reading emotions from strangers’ eyes.
然而，以往的多数研究都没有达到如此大的规模，也没有覆盖这么广的年龄段。网站上的参与者年龄在10岁到89岁之间，他们参与了大量的测试，评估了对抽象符号和数字串的记忆力、解决问题的能力，以及根据眼神解读陌生人情绪的能力。
At least as important, the researchers looked at the effect of age on each type of test. Previous research had often grouped related tests together, on the assumption that they captured a single underlying attribute in the same way a coach might rate, say, athleticism based on a person’s speed, strength and vertical leaping ability.
同样重要的是，研究人员观察了年龄对每一项测试的影响。以往的研究经常把相关的测试分为一组，想当然地认为它们捕捉到了一项基本属性，就像教练可以根据一个人的速度、力量和弹跳能力评估他的运动能力一样。
The result of the new approach? “We found different abilities really maturing or ripening at different ages,” Dr. Germine said. “It’s a much richer picture of the life span than just calling it aging.”
这种新方法的结果如何？“我们发现不同的能力的确会在不同的年龄臻于成熟，”杰米恩说。“它反映了人生中丰富得多的变化，而不只是衰老。”
Processing speed — the quickness with which someone can manipulate digits, words or images, as if on a mental sketch board — generally peaks in the late teens, Dr. Germine and Dr. Hartshorne confirmed, and memory for some things, like names, does so in the early 20s. But the capacity of that sketch board, called working memory, peaks at least a decade later and is slow to decline. In particular, the ability to recall faces and do some mental manipulation of numbers peaked about age 30, the study found, “a fact difficult to assimilate into the fluid/crystalized intelligence dichotomy.”
杰米恩博士和哈茨霍恩博士证实，信息处理速度——如同头脑中有一块素描板，一个人在上面处理数字、单词或图像的速度——基本上在十八九岁的时候达到峰值；对一些事情的记忆力，比如对一些名字的记忆，会在20岁出头的时候达到顶峰。但这个素描板的容量，即工作记忆，至少还要10年之后才能达到峰值，而且下降的速度很慢。特别值得一提的是，研究发现，记忆一些人的长相以及心算的能力，会在30岁左右达到峰值，“这个事实很难用液态/晶态的智力二分法来解释。”
The researchers also analyzed results from the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. The test involves looking at snapshots of strangers’ eyes on a computer screen and determining their moods from a menu of options like “tentative,” “uncertain” and “skeptical.”
研究人员还分析了“眼神读心能力测试”的结果。在这项测试中，测试者需要看着计算机屏幕上陌生人眼睛的照片，从一些选项中选出他们的心情，比如“犹豫”、“不确定”和“怀疑”。
“It’s not an easy test, and you’re not sure afterward how well you did,” Dr. Germine said. “I thought I’d done poorly but in fact did pretty well.” Yet people in their 40s or 50s consistently did the best, the study found, and the skill declined very slowly later in life.
“这个测试并不容易，你做完之后心里没底，”杰米恩说。“我以为我做的很糟糕，但实际上成绩相当不错。”然而研究发现，四五十岁的人成绩最好，而且随着年龄的进一步增长，这种能力下降得十分缓慢。
The picture that emerges from these findings is of an older brain that moves more slowly than its younger self, but is just as accurate in many areas and more adept at reading others’ moods — on top of being more knowledgeable. That’s a handy combination, given that so many important decisions people make intimately affects others.
这些发现所反映的情况是，年长者的大脑的运转速度比年轻时慢，但在许多领域同样敏锐，而且更擅长察觉他人的情绪——不光是知识更渊博了。考虑到人们做出的许多重要决定都会密切地影响他人，这是一个不错的状态。
No one needs a cognitive scientist to explain that it’s better to approach a boss about a raise when he or she is in a good mood. But the older mind may be better able to head off interpersonal misjudgments and to navigate tricky situations.
没人需要一名认知科学家来告诉自己，为什么在老板心情好的时候，更适合找他谈涨薪。但年长一些的人可能更加擅长避免人际关系上的误判，以及应付棘手的局面。
“As in, ‘that person’s not happy with all your quick thinking and young person’s processing speed — he’s about to punch you,’” said Zach Hambrick, a psychology professor at Michigan State University.
“比如，‘那个人看不惯你思维太快，那种年轻人的信息处理速度——他就要给你一拳了，’”密歇根大学的心理学教授扎克·汉布里克(Zach Hambrick)说。
The details of this more textured picture of the aging brain are still far from clear, and social measures like the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test have not been used much in this kind of research, Dr. Hambrick and other experts said. And it is not apparent from the new analysis whether changes in cognition with age result from a single cause — like a decline in the speed of neural transmission — or to multiple ones.
汉布里克和其他专家说，大脑衰老过程中更复杂情况的细节还很不清楚，眼神读心能力等社会化衡量标准也没有被大量用于此类研究。此外，最新的分析结果也没有告诉我们，认知能力随年龄增长而发生的改变是单一因素——比如神经传输速度的下降——还是多种原因造成的。
But for now, the new research at least gives some meaning to the empty adjective “wily.”
但就目前而言，这项新研究至少给“老谋深算”这个空洞的形容词赋予了一些意义。
