Cognitive speeds go downhill after 24

If you are over 24 years of age you have already reached the peak of your cognitive motor performance - brain's ability to process something and react to it - according to a new study.
In one of the first social science experiments to rest on big data, researchers from Simon Fraser University, Canada, investigated when humans start to experience an age-related decline in their cognitive motor skills and how they compensate for that.
The researchers analysed the digital performance records of 3,305 StarCraft 2 players, aged 16 to 44.
StarCraft 2 is a ruthless competitive intergalactic computer war game that players often undertake to win serious money.

Their performance records, which can be readily replayed, constitute big data because they represent thousands of hours worth of strategic real-time cognitive-based moves performed at varied skill levels.
Using complex statistical modelling, the researchers distilled meaning from this colossal compilation of information about how players responded to their opponents and more importantly, how long they took to react.

"After around 24 years of age, players show slowing in a measure of cognitive speed that is known to be important for performance," said Joe Thompson, a psychology doctoral student, the lead author of the study, which is his thesis.
"This cognitive performance decline is present even at higher levels of skill," he said.

However, researchers said, there is a silver lining in this earlier-than-expected slippery slope into old age.
"Older players, though slower, seem to compensate by employing simpler strategies and using the game's interface more efficiently than younger players, enabling them to retain their skill, despite cognitive motor-speed loss," Thompson said.
For example, older players more readily use short cut and sophisticated command keys to compensate for declining speed in executing real time decisions.
The findings suggest "that our cognitive-motor capacities are not stable across our adulthood, but are constantly in flux, and that our day-to-day performance is a result of the constant interplay between change and adaptation."

Thompson said the study does not inform us about how our increasingly distracting computerised world may ultimately affect our use of adaptive behaviours to compensate for declining cognitive motor skills.