ArticleScience advances2025
Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exploring spiritual health among South Korean older adults using the ICECAP-O measure: a cross-sectional study.Health and quality of life outcomes · 2026Article
- Prediction of cognitive performance by demographics, sleep, and brain morphometry: machine learning findings from ENIGMA-Sleep Working Group.Research square · 2026Article
- Article
- Digital biomarkers for brain health: passive and continuous assessment from wearable sensors.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- Testing whether paralinguistic cues alter math learning in highly math anxious adults.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Mechanobiology of hippocampal neurogenesis: directing neural stem cell fate through physical cues.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2026Review
- Psychological well-being of SLE patients: A comprehensive examination of stress, depression, anxiety and quality of life.PloS one · 2026Article
- Network analysis of the relationships among activities of daily living disability, cognitive impairment, and depression in Chinese older adults.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Cognitive impairment and its influencing factors in patients with stable schizophrenia on regular medication: a real-world clinical study.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- ADL and Cognitive Function in Chinese Elderly: Mediating Role of Social Participation and Moderating Role of Intergenerational Support.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cross-sectional age-skill profiles suggest that cognitive skills start declining by age 30 if not earlier. If accurate, such age-driven skill losses pose a major threat to the human capital of societies with rapidly aging populations. We estimate actual age-skill profiles from individual changes in literacy and numeracy skills at different ages. We use the unique German longitudinal component of the Programme of the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC-L) that retested a large representative sample of adults after 3.5 years. Our empirical approach separates age from cohort effects and corrects for measurement error from reversion to the mean. Two main results emerge. First, average skills increase strongly into the forties before decreasing slightly in literacy and more strongly in numeracy. Second, skills decline at older ages only for those with below-average skill usage. White-collar and higher-educated workers with above-average usage show increasing skills even beyond their forties. Women have larger skill losses at older age, particularly in numeracy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.