Older people are better at correcting mistakes

Outside of antiques fairs we live in a society obsessed with newness. Despite the fact that you’ve only had your mephone 8 for ten months you still have to “upgrade” to the mephone 8.2 because; well, it’s new and shiny. This deer-in-the-headlights-like fascination with freshness mirrors itself into an idealisation of youth at the expense of age but is youth really all it is cracked up to be? Perhaps not, as at least one study has shown that, for instance, older people are better at correcting their mistakes.

Older adults overall got an average 41 per cent of answers correct while younger adults got 26 per cent right. Additionally, older adults corrected more incorrect answers overall and they also corrected more low-confidence incorrect answers.

There is a phenomenon known as the “hypercorrection effect” which entails that when people are very confident about an answer that turns out to be wrong they tend to correct it however, when they are unsure about an answer that turns out to be wrong they are less likely to correct it. Research has shown previously that the hypercorrection effect is stronger in children and young adults than in older adults. These researchers though, hypothesised that this effect might be due to the fact that older adults are actually better at correcting low-confidence errors so the hypercorrection effect does not seem as pronounced.

To test this the researchers gathered a group of young adults average age 24 and a second group of older adults average age 74. No subjects had any history of psychological ill health.

The subjects were fitted with EEG caps and given a series of general questions on a variety of topics (like “In what city were the Hanging Gardens located?”). Subjects were encouraged to guess when unsure but also allowed to say “I don’t know”. The subjects also rated how confident they were of their response on a 7 point scale and were then given the correct answer. The brain’s electrical activity was measured while the correcting information was displayed.

The process continued until the subject made at least 20 errors on at least 20 high confidence questions and 20 low confidence questions. On average this required 244 questions for older adults and 230 questions for younger adults.

The EEG cap was then removed and the subjects were given a surprise re-test that included the 40 high and low confidence incorrect answers and 20 previously unseen questions.

Older adults overall got an average 41 per cent of answers correct while younger adults got 26 per cent right. Additionally, older adults corrected more incorrect answers overall and they also corrected more low-confidence incorrect answers.

The researchers say that this shows that older adults are better at updating their existing knowledge with new information. It seems that you can teach an old dog new tricks.