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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Findings from a new study [sciencedaily.com] challenge the notion that older adults always lag behind their younger counterparts when it comes to learning new things. The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that older adults were actually better than young adults at correcting their mistakes on a general information quiz.

"The take home message is that there are some things that older adults can learn extremely well, even better than young adults. Correcting their factual errors--all of their errors--is one of them," say psychological scientists Janet Metcalfe and David Friedman of Columbia University, who conducted the study. "There is such a negative stereotype about older adults' cognitive abilities but our findings indicate that reality may not be as bleak as the stereotype implies."

Metcalfe, Friedman, and colleagues were interested in exploring a phenomenon known as the "hypercorrection effect." According to the effect, when people are very confident about an answer that turns out to be wrong, they tend to correct it; when they're initially unsure about the answer, however, they're less likely to correct it. Previous research has shown that the effect is robust in college students and children, but not as strong in older adults.

Old dogs still have some bite.

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