Ageing and Old Age

Too Old at 25 The need to regard ageing as a continuous process which starts soon after maturity is reached was stressed by Dr. ALASTAIR HERON (Liverpool), deputy director of the Medical Research Council Group for Research on the Occupational Aspects of Ageing. In the past too much attention had been paid to the end product of the ageing process rather than to the process itself, he said. There was little justification for the view that ageing begins at some arbitrary point such as the age of 65. There were other crucial ages, and some of us had already passed them. Muscular strength would appear to be at its maximum in the late twenties, while some signs of hearing loss were often apparent in the early forties. Similarly deterioration occurred throughout life in visual perception. These physiological changes were paralleled by changes in mental capacity. There was a slow but steady fall in the average score on standardized intelligence tests after the age of 25, while the prolongation of reaction time, in the elderly was almost certainly due to differences in the way the ageing individual coped with incoming information. Emotional differences demonstrated