Wellbeing and Mental Health

This study of 1.6 million chess moves found the age we hit our cognitive peak

Dinara Saduakassova, a 23-year-old Kazakh chess player and social activist, teaches children in the Chess Academy she founded in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan March 3, 2020. Saduakassova has opened a chain of chess schools in the country and has become a Goodwill Ambassador of the UNICEF. Picture taken March 3, 2020. REUTERS/Pavel Mikheyev - RC2ODF99KN3U

Cognitive ability rises sharply until the early 20s and then plateaus. Image: REUTERS/Pavel Mikheyev

Victoria Masterson
Senior Writer, Forum Agenda
  • Scientists analyzed professional chess tournaments between 1890 and 2014.
  • They found cognitive ability rises sharply until the early 20s and then plateaus.
  • Performance also steadily increased over the course of the 20th century, steepening in the 1990s, which has coincided with the rise of digital technology.
  • The metric could be used to analyze age-performance patterns, authors suggest.

More than 24,000 chess games played in professional tournaments over 125 years have been analyzed by scientists to measure how age affects cognitive ability.

They conclude that humans reach their cognitive peak around the age of 35 and begin to decline after the age of 45. And our cognitive abilities today exceed those of our ancestors.

“Performance reveals a hump-shaped pattern over the life cycle,” report the authors in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Individual performance increases sharply until the early 20s and then reaches a plateau, with a peak around 35 years and a sustained decline at higher ages.”

Have you read?
Cognitive score age chess
The hump of human cognitive ability. Image: PNAS

Champion moves

Surprisingly little is known how human cognitive ability changes over the course of a lifetime, despite our tasks in the workplace becoming more cognitively demanding.

The study analyzed professional chess tournaments between the years 1890 and 2014, which recorded more than 1.6 million individual moves.

By comparing the human moves with the optimum moves a chess computer would make, the researchers were able to chart how a player’s cognitive performance changed as they aged.

This metric gives an insight into age-performance patterns and their dynamics over time and across age groups, the authors say.

Digital divide

In total, 4,294 players, comprising 20 world champions and 4,274 opponents, were observed.

The study covered all chess world champions since the first generally accepted world champion Wilhelm Steinitz (lived 1836 to 1900) to Magnus Carlsen (born in 1990, world champion since 2013).

Players born after the 1970s showed average cognitive ability around 8% higher than players born around the 1870s.

"Our results suggest that the conditions under which people grow up these days – which of course include the rapid growth of digital technology – have a decisive impact on the development of their cognitive abilities," says Uwe Sunde, Professor of Economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and one of the report’s authors.

The data also showed performance steadily increasing over the course of the 20th century, and steepening during the 1990s.

“This coincides with a phase when new information technology and the availability of powerful and affordable chess engines on home computers made chess-specific knowledge widely available and dramatically changed players’ preparation possibilities,” the authors say.

Learning skills cognitive cognition ability
Our cognitive ability today is better than our ancestors. Image: PNAS

Skills of the future

The rapid growth of digital technology isn't just having an effect on our cognitive abilities - it's also shaping the future of work.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2020 has examined the outlook for technology adoption, jobs and skills in the next five years, including pandemic-related disruptions.

Critical thinking, analysis and problem-solving are among the key skills employers expect to see rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025, the report finds.

But, the authors also warn that the window of opportunity to reskill and upskill workers has become shorter in the newly constrained labour market.

Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Stay up to date:

Mental Health

Related topics:
Wellbeing and Mental HealthEmerging TechnologiesHealth and Healthcare Systems
Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Mental Health is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

How Japan is healing from its overwork crisis through innovation

Grace Chang

October 28, 2024

What is menopause – and how does it impact women’s health and work life?

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum