Seniors' choices
|
|
From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
As people get older, it can be harder to make decisions. But researchers say older people might have some surprising ability. At North Carolina State University, Tara Queen saw this by having older and younger people choose from a list of apartments.
Queen says younger people did better on separating important from unimportant information. But she says older people with higher education did better on this than did older people without higher education. And she says older people in general did well on decisions they could base on life experience or intuition.
Queen concludes:
"Aging doesn't affect all areas of decision-making, so intuitive decision-making is relatively preserved as we get older." (6 seconds)
The study in the journal Psychology and Aging was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.