Elderly Man Cut in Front of You? He'll Probably Never Remember It -- Or Worse, Admit It
Now this hardly comes as a surprise, but did you know that older people are less able to recognize when they make a mistake ? Or admit it (looking at you, President Trump). In a recent study, o lder adults performed just as well as younger adults in tests involving looking away from an object appearing on the screen. But younger adults acknowledged more often than older adults when they failed to look away from the object. And, older adults were more likely to be adamant that they did not made a mistake. “The good news is older adults perform the tasks we assigned them just as well as younger adults, albeit more slowly,” says Jan Wessel , assistant professor in the University of Iowa Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the study’s corresponding author. “But we find there is this impaired ability in older adults to recognize an error when they’ve made one.” The research offers new insight how older people perceive their decisions, and especially...