Comment on Age, fluid intelligence, and intelligent posts

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:26:51 GMT

The Salthouse paper states that the Z-scores there are relative to the entire sample (ages 20 - 60). But I'm pretty sure that the OP's graph uses Z-scores relative to the variation within an age cohort. Otherwise, they would be too steep to be believable - almost mathematically impossible considering that the sample runs out to age 80 and shows a drop of about 2.0 Z units

ETA: The Flynn effect may account for about a third of the apparent drop in cognitive ability - that is, today's old-folks started off less cognitively skilled than today's youngsters, so their decline with age is not as steep as it looks.

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