The study, performed at Scotland’s
University of Edinburgh, tested 1,066 men and women born in 1936 who
were mostly retired. It looked at the subjects’ IQ at age 70, their
general cognitive ability, memory, and processing speed in addition
to the complexity of their occupations as it related to data,
interacting with people and with things.
The researchers were able to compare
all of that with IQ tests that had been performed when the subjects
were 11 years old because almost all Scottish kids that age completed
something called the Scottish Mental Survey. The researchers asked
the subjects to do things like repeat information after a delay. To
measure more general cognitive dexterity, they asked subjects to
complete patterns.
The subjects who had jobs where they
had to analyze and take in data, like mathematicians and civil
engineers, displayed better cognitive ability at age 70, as did those
who worked on complicated tasks with people, like mentoring,
counseling, coaching or negotiating. Judges, social workers and
probation officers have those sorts of jobs.
Other studies have reached similar
conclusions: Use your brain or start to lose your edge.
One caveat: the researchers point out
that people who start with high IQs tend to take on more challenging
professions. “’[A]n individual’s level of engagement in complex
activities might be a consequence of differences in prior cognitive
ability,” they write. Nevertheless, the study finds that
participants seemed to gain extra brain power through taking on more
complex work. The difference in cognitive functioning was small, only
about 1%-2%. Still, the researchers say that was significant. “The
findings are consistent with those reported and provide support for
occupational complexity as a modest predictor of cognitive
performance in later life, independently of prior ability,” they
write.
They make an interesting distinction
between, on the one hand, working with “data,” meaning
synthesizing, coordinating, analyzing and computing as well as
interacting with “people,” through mentoring, negotiating,
instructing and supervising, and on the other hand, occupations where
you deal with “things,” like setting up, driving-operating and
handling. Participants whose occupations have them dealing with
things only, demonstrate lower cognitive functioning at age 70 than
those who work with data and people.
So what career should you pursue if you
want a healthy brain? Therapist, pediatrician, mediator, physical
therapist, software engineer, computer scientist. Not to denigrate
these professions but toll collectors, hotel housekeepers, window
cleaners and warehouse workers may not be setting themselves up for
the best brain functioning at age 70.
Source: Forbes