The older you get the SMARTER you get, study says

For contrary to the long-held assumption that brain power peaks between the ages of 18 and 26, new research indicates that it actually increases with age.

The ground-breaking report suggests that many preconceptions about ageing made by employers and policymakers need to be brushed aside.

The study - by psychologist Lars Larsen, of Denmark's University of Aarhus - looked at 4,300 U.S. servicemen who had undergone intelligence tests when they signed up aged around 20, and again 20 years later.

Comparing the two sets of results showed that mathematical skills among the servicemen - all Vietnam veterans - appeared to remain unchanged, rather than reducing with age, while their verbal skills actually improved considerably.

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Professor Larsen said his study - The Stability Of General Intelligence From Early Adulthood To Middle-Age - showed that there was not, as commonly assumed, a steady decline in brainpower from early adulthood onwards.

He said: "Verbal ability appears to keep increasing over time."

In the study, published in the academic journal Intelligence, the professor suggests that the improvement may simply be the result of long years of practice.

As life experience grows, and we face different challenges, it is argued, we develop increasing verbal dexterity to describe our world and cope with it.

And the research suggests that this development is so great it overrides the well-documented loss of brain cells that begins as we approach our thirties. If correct, Professor Larsen's findings support universities' increasing drive to recruit mature students - as well as the proverb that youth is wasted on the young.

At the age of 89, great-grandfather William Cooper became Britain's oldest graduate when he was awarded a degree in sociology by Wolverhampton University, more than 70 years after he left school.

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Widower Mr Cooper, of Wednesfield, Wolverhampton, said: "It hasn't been easy learning again. I can go from ecstasy to agony in five minutes.

"But I would advise people thinking about returning to education to go for it.

"I thought I wouldn't get accepted, but I have met lots of new people and the tutors have been really helpful."

His success was also aided by the fact that, unlike many 20-year-old students, he was unlikely to desert his books to go on a pub crawl.