The growing body of this new research suggests that our capacity
for gist grows over a lifetime and can peak as late as our 70s. A blend
of stored memories from a lifetime of experience combined with chemical changes
that prompt complex neural networking accounts for this ever-increasing
capacity for gist thinking. By middle age the experienced brain contains more
information, relies on more complex circuitry, and packs a stronger cocktail of
neurological chemicals than that of a much younger brain. As a result, people
with experience can often cut through clutter, focus on what matters, and frame
up choices without the excessive deliberation and calculation used by younger
counterparts. Or, as Lois Holzman, Ph.D., of the East Side Institute describes
the fully developed brain: “It’s a complex, exquisitely efficient
information-processing system, designed to organize behavior rapidly in the
interests of survival.”
“We flexibly memorize our experiences,” explains Michael Mack, a
postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “This allows us
to use these memories for different kinds of decisions.”
Of course, some aspects of
cognition do slow down with time. Ask the typical 65-year-old about memory
recall and you’ll likely hear a story about the most recent “senior moment.” A
forgotten name or missed appointment that just seemed to vanish from the mind.
While our capacity for rapid recall may slow down, much of this is accounted
for by the sheer volume of facts stored in the older brain. Sifting through a
lifetime of experience takes time so the brain tends to narrow its search to
the core—or the gist—of a given memory. Michael Ramscar, working at University
of Tübingen in Germany, found that this volume of information accounts for the
difference in retrieval speed. Writing in The
Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel
Simons add: “It is mostly the details in the memory that change over time, not
the meaning. Memory for the gist of something—for the main idea—is much better
than memory for specific details.”
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