ABSTRACT
When Robert Sternberg asked randomly selected American citizens to define 'intelligence' he found that all accepted that some of us are 'natural fast studies' who can learn new information faster than most, but also thought that 'intelligence' was a learned capital of 'smarts': useful skills that we have mastered to better manage our daily lives and professions. A different and more interesting question is whether there are differences in the survival of different mental skills so that high achievement in philosophy, painting and music remain possible after aging has degraded excellence at mathematics, hard science and poetry. It is hard to find convincing data to use for such comparisons. The broader point is that, as in all aspects of mental life, the changes that age brings about in our everyday efficiency are not only due to changes in our brains that impose new limits on our mental performance.
