Did you know that certain types of cognitive skills APPEAR to peak at certain ages? For example, it once was believed the knowledge of vocabulary peaked in the late 40s but newer data suggests it peaks in the late 60s or early 70s -- though it is unclear how this is affected by the rate of introduction of neologisms (i.e., new words) into common usage as well as reading patterns, media exposure, social interactions, and a bunch of other variables.
I was vaguely aware of such things (I'm working on figuring out whether there are critical period for certain cognitive abilities or merely sensitive periods) but I became aware of this because I read a news article from the MIT news office on research conducted by two MIT'ers. You can read it here: https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/brain-peaks-at-different-ages-0306 But, hey, the research described is supposed to be published in the Association for Psychological Sciences' (APS) journal "Psychological Science" and I thought "Hey, I'm a member of APS, why don't I go over to the APS website and get a copy of the article!?!" So I go over to the APS website, go to the section for Psychological Science and do a search for one of the authors (Joshua Hartshorne). And this is what I found: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/cognitive-skills-peak-at-different-ages-across-adulthood.html This is basically a news article based on the MIT news article (there's a link at the bottom of the page that connects to the MIT page for additional info). A sidebar box to the APS article says: For a copy of the research article and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact: And I got to wondering: wait a minute, I'm already on the APS website, the articles imply that the research is published in Psychological Science, so where is it? If it isn't available to APS member yet, why was it made available to the media? If you search for "Joshua Hartshorne" and "Laura Gemine" in news.google.com you'll find a growing number of mass media websites reporting on this research (they all could be relying on the MIT press release instead of the original article). This raises the question of why one would want to release research to the popular media before the official release of the research article? How is one to evaluate how accurate the reporting is in the popular media account if one does not have the original research article? Is this shameless self-promotion or the well intentioned desire to make readily available important research results? But if it is the latter, why isn't a pre-publication version of the article made available (I can't find any link to it on either the MIT or APS sites; I did not bother to go to Hartshorne's website to see if it is there -- it also does not seem to show up on scholar.google.com). So, what is going on? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@mail-archive.com. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=42842 or send a blank email to leave-42842-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
