By Claire Nurden
Research and Policy Officer
Now I'm no scientist, so I can't question the validity of the
research findings on older people's ability to multitask, which
have been widely reported in today's media. But we can question the
nature of the reporting of these findings, and the skewed
impression it gives about people's capabilities in their later
years.
The headlines (unsurprisingly) seize on the evidence that older
brains are 'less nimble' in their ability to deal with more than
one situation at once, and that the ability to multitask 'wanes'
with age. But surely the point here is not how many tasks you do at
once, but how well you can do them. The added skills and experience
many older people bring to bear on the situations they are faced
with could, in fact, counter any supposed decline in pure
processing ability. This point is made very strongly in the recent
Lewis Wolport book on ageing.
While some changes in brain functions might occur as we age, we
shouldn't be reporting this as if it was the only thing - or even
the most important thing - about getting older.
