Is age really cruel to experts? Compensatory effects of activity.

Abstract

Age-related decline may not be as pronounced in complex activities as it is in basic cognitive processes, but ability deterioration with age is difficult to deny. However, studies disagree on whether age is kinder to more able people than it is to their less able peers. In this article, we investigated the "age is kinder to the more able" hypothesis by using a chess database that contains activity records for both beginners and world-class players. The descriptive data suggested that the skill function across age captures the 3 phases as described in Simonton's model of career trajectories: initial rise to the peak of performance, postpeak decline, and eventual stabilization of decline. We therefore modeled the data with a linear mixed-effect model using the cubic function that captures 3 phases. The results show that age may be kind to the more able in a subtler manner than has previously been assumed. After reaching the peak at around 38 years, the more able players deteriorated more quickly. Their decline, however, started to slow down at around 52 years, earlier than for less able players (57 years). Both the decline and its stabilization were significantly influenced by activity. The more players engaged in playing tournaments, the less they declined and the earlier they started to stabilize. The best experts may not be immune to aging, but their previously acquired expertise and current activity enable them to maintain high levels of skill even at an advanced age.

What Has the Study of Digital Games Contributed to the Science of Expert Behavior?

“…Big data can certainly help in tracing populations trends in performance and has been used, for instance, in tracking the development of chess expertise (e.g., Howard, ), to try to understand the life‐span rise, fall, and late‐life rise of chess skill (e.g., Roring & Charness, ; Vaci, Bartosz, & Bilalic, ). Nonetheless, there are risks associated with aggregated data to model what are, ultimately, individual trends.…”

A Novel Theoretical Life Course Framework for Triggering Cognitive Development across the Lifespan

“…For infants and children, however, caregivers may build and amend (or even break) their children's routines to scaffold their ability to learn from new experiences, rather than allowing them to remain comfortable in their routines. Continuing to engage in stimulating activities related to one's expertise (e.g., chess) may allow adults to maintain general cognitive abilities for a longer period of time compared to novices [Vaci & Gula, 2015]. However, specializing ultimately reduces adaptation to novel situations due to increased constraints imposed by prior knowledge, perhaps leading to cognitive decline apparent in novel and eventually familiar situations.…”

The joint influence of intelligence and practice on skill development throughout the life span

“…Preliminary data screening was performed to ensure that potential data entry mistakes were eliminated. We followed the procedure from previous studies (28,45,46) and restricted the tails of the age distribution. In the case of this study, we excluded players under 10 y and over 80 y when presenting the modeling results (Fig.…”

“…Elo takes into account official games in tournaments and is a reliable and valid measure of expertise (25). Second, chess as a domain offers accurate records of tournament games played, which can be taken as an approximation of practice (28). From official records, we collected 20 y of Elo ratings per player and the number of games played in each year, producing over 1,800 data points.…”