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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 169 - Experience versus speed

Luyện tập với IELTS Academic Reading Sample 169 - Experience versus speed giúp các bạn hệ thống kiến thức đã học, làm quen với cấu trúc đề thi, đồng thời rèn luyện kỹ năng giải đề giúp bạn tự tin đạt kết quả cao trong kì thi sắp tới. Mời các bạn cùng tham khảo. | You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-12 which are based on the Reading Passage below. Experience versus speed Certain mental functions slow down with age but the brain compensates in ways that can keep seniors as sharp as youngsters. Jake aged 16 has a terrific relationship with his grandmother Rita who is 70. They live close by and they even take a Spanish class together twice a week at a local college. After class they sometimes stop at a cafe for a snack. On one occasion Rita tells Jake I think it s great how fast you pick up new grammar. It takes me a lot longer. Jake replies Yeah but you don t seem to make as many silly mistakes on the quizzes as I do. How do you do that In that moment Rita and Jake stumbled across an interesting set of differences between older and younger minds. Popular psychology says that as people age their brains slow down . The implication of course is that elderly men and women are not as mentally agile as middle-aged adults or even teenagers. However although certain brain functions such as perception and reaction time do indeed take longer that slowing down does not necessarily undermine mental sharpness. Indeed evidence shows that older people are just as mentally fit as younger people because their brains compensate for some kinds of declines in creative ways that young minds do not exploit. Just as people s bodies age at different rates so do their minds. As adults advance in age the perception of sights sounds and smells takes a bit longer and laying down new information into memory becomes more difficult. The ability to retrieve memories also quickly slides and it is sometimes harder to concentrate and maintain attention. On the other hand the ageing brain can create significant benefits by tapping into its extensive hoard of accumulated knowledge and experience. The biggest trick that older brains employ is to use both hemispheres simultaneously to handle tasks for which younger brains rely predominantly on one .