Critique of a news article - Assignment Example

News article critique s News Article “The Smartest Age” The Atlantic - http www.theatlantic.com/health/archive 03/the-smartest-age/387862/#disqus_thread Main research questions: “At what age do we really peak? Is there ever a point where, intellectually, we’re as good as we’re going to get?” (Khazan, 2015) Further in the article author also specifies, that Hartshorne and Germine “take a look at the ages at which various types of cognitive performance crest” (Khazan, 2015).Main findings and limitations: “It depends on what you’re measuring, it turns out” (Khazan, 2015).

“Hartshorne confirmed that older participants performed better than younger ones on a vocabulary test, but younger ones outshined their older counterparts on a series of memory-related tests. And people right around the age of 47 did best at a test called “mind-in-eyes”, which means understanding emotions (2015). The interpretation of the findings: At the end of the article author makes a generalized conclusion, “There’s no single “smartest” age—people of different ages are best at different things” (2015).

It can be considered as the interpretation of the study results. Yet it should be mentioned that within the article Khazan widely describes and visualize Hartshorne and Germine’s findings, bringing several diagrams from the original academic article to help readers to interpret the findings.Research ArticleHartshorne, J. K. and Germine, L. T. (2015). When Does Cognitive Functioning Peak? The Asynchronous Rise and Fall of Different Cognitive Abilities Across the Life Span. Psychological Science, March 13, p.1-11.The main research questions: There’s no one clear hypothesis as authors are generally interested with examining “differences in age of peak performance” using a wider data base than ever before (Hartshorne and Germine, 2015).

Their primary concern is “the age-related cognitive decline” and rise (Hartshorne and Germine, 2015). The research question specifies for Experiment 1 (“the degree of heterogeneity in age of peak performance”), and Experiment 2, 3 were made to deepen Experiment 1 results (Hartshorne and Germine, 2015). The findings and limitations: “We observed the previously reported pattern of earlier peaks for fluid intelligence than for crystalized intelligence” (Hartshorne and Germine, 2015).

Such wide results refer to a wide number of tasks for experimental samples (30 different cognitive tasks). There were not many other significant differences, and thus scholars naturally stress on most outstanding results from Experiment 2, 3. While young people are better in processing and memory tasks, middle age people are better in understanding emotions. In its turn, elderly demonstrates better results in experience-depend tasks. The interpretation of the findings: “The present study demonstrates that age-related changes in cognitive ability are considerably more heterogeneous and complex.

There no age at which humans perform at peak on all cognitive tasks” and “there may not be an age at which humans perform at peak on most cognitive tasks” (Hartshorne and Germine, 2015). ComparisonCritique: Generally, in news article Khazan presents the same research questions, same findings and same interpretations which Hartshorne and Germine define in the original academic article. Moreover, Khazan puts the same accents when speaking on the study findings (better memory and processing among youth, better understanding of emotions in middle age and better vocabulary skills among elderly).

Khazan only paraphrase and simplify those original questions, findings and interpretations and convert them into a news style information for a common knowledge. Rewrite: I would advise Khazan to mention the cause-and-effect relationship between Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, 3 because there’s one in original study. Yet I have no other remarks, as the news article follows well all the key points of the academic one.ReferencesHartshorne, J. K. and Germine, L. T. (2015). When Does Cognitive Functioning Peak?

The Asynchronous Rise and Fall of Different Cognitive Abilities Across the Life Span. Psychological Science, March 13, p.1-11. Retrieved from http://joshuakhartshorne.org/papers/HartshorneGermine2015.pdfKhazan, O. (March 17, 2015). The Smartest Age. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/the-smartest-age/387862/#disqus_thread