The ages you're the smartest at everything throughout your life (2024)

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Overall brain processing power and detail memory peaks around age 18.

Scientistsuse a test called Digit Symbol Substitution to assess everything from dementia to brain damage. It requires people to use a number ofcognitive skills at once — includingprocessing speed, sustained attention, and visualskills. The tool, which typically involves pairing numbers with symbols, is also part of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, one of the most widely used measures of intelligence.

Hartshorne employed the test in his study of how intelligence changes over time and found that participants' performance generally peaked in their late teens.

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The ability to learn unfamiliar names peaks at 22.

Most adultsare bad at memorizing bitsof information without context, a phenomenon thatneuroscientists chock up tothe Baker/Baker paradox. A classic example of this idea is that you'll have an easier time rememberinga story about someone who bakesthan a person with the last name Baker. Because there'sno context thatlinks the person to the name, itdoesn't become firmlylodged in your memory.

Young peopledon't appear to be assaddled by this issue, though — a 2011 study found that humans arebest at learning new names in our early 20s.

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Peak facial recognition ability occurs around 32.

The human brain has a remarkable capacity to recognize and identify faces, and scientists are just beginning to learn why. On average, we know that our ability to learn and remember new faces appears to peak shortly after our30th birthday.

The first researchers to link peak face recognition with an ageare now studying so-called "super-recognizers" — people with a rare, superior ability to recognize a familiar face. Not coincidentally, many of them are in their 30s.

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Concentration abilities peak around age 43.

Having trouble focusing? A 2015 study from researchers at Harvard University and the Boston Attention and Learning Laboratory suggests that our abilityto sustain attention improves with age, reaching its peak around age 43.

“While younger adults may excel in the speed and flexibility of information processing, adults approaching their mid-years may have the greatest capacity to remain focused,” Joe DeGutis, one of the study's lead authors, said in a statement.

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We're the best at identifying others' emotions at 48.

Dating is tough. One of the reasons could be thatwe're generally bad at reading other people's emotions until we reach our late 40s. That's according to one component of Hartshorne's study, whichinvolved showing thousands of peopleimages of faces cropped tightly around the eye area. Participants were asked to describe theemotion the person in the photowas feeling. Performance peaked for people aged around48.

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The ability to do basic arithmetic peaks at age 50.

Many people believe that their math skills go down the drain after they leave school and stop practicing arithmetic. But the next time you try to split upa check, keep this in mind: your ability to do basic subtraction and division doesn't reach its apex until your 50th birthday.

In other words, "there may not be an age where you're the best at everything," Hartshorne said.

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Peak ability to learn and understand new information also occurs around age 50.

Similar to the way your ability to do basic mathpeaks at age 50, your ability to learn and understand general information — like historical events and political ideas — doesn't reach its pinnacleuntil aroundthe same age, according to Hartshorne's study.

Peak vocabulary skills happen around age 67.

Ever wonder why you always lose at Scrabble? Good news: Your best days may be ahead.According to people's scores on multiple-choice vocabulary tests, most of us don't reach our peak wordsmith-ing abilities until we're in our late 60s or early 70s.