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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> But the final observation, Taylor said, was "unexpected": "The older pilots start lower [in the simulator test scores], but do better from year to year than the youngest pilots."
Though older pilots are not likely to surpass younger pilots in testing, "the older pilots are closing the age gap in their performance from year to year. It's like they're learning something from year to year about this task," Taylor said.
Key to this effect was the older pilots' performance in the traffic-avoidance test that gauges how well test subjects avoid oncoming planes. Taylor suggested this could be a reflection of the deep well of experience older pilots can tap into, much as veteran musicians, athletes and chess players react almost without thinking to certain situations.
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"There is something about the traffic-avoidance task that has some gamesmanship about it, in which the response is always the same," she explained. "It's a consistently mapped stimulus-response problem: This is the stimulus, and this is what you do."
The findings were published in the Feb. 27 issue of Neurology. The Coalition of Airline Pilots Association, which represents U.S. pilots, declined to comment on the study.
Sirven, who wrote an accompanying editorial on the study, called the findings "a little counter to common thought."
"The expectation is that there should have been a clear decline, that there should never have been a time where the older pilots did better in terms of their performance [than the younger pilots], but they did," he said.
"This is one of those times where age and experience does impart something that gives you extra help to level the playing field," Sirven said. "You may not be as fast, but this crystallized intelligence gives an extra advantage. Age gives you wisdom that makes up for the slowing of other skills."
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