India, March 16 -- Cognitive skills like problem-solving and thinking are generally thought to develop in childhood, peak in the twenties, and start to decline by the thirties. However, this is not the case in reality.

A study published in Science Advances flipped this general narrative, revealing that literacy and numeracy skills do not start to decline in the thirties and, in fact, may continue improving into the forties. After that, whether they plateau or decline depends on the individual.

Researchers conducted an experiment on German adults for over 3.5 years. The study followed the same people to get an accurate assessment of the ageing's effect on cognitive skills.

This is what the findings revealed:

The decline of cognitive sk...