Why Are There Old People

Abstract

Biological theories of adaptation are used to generate a model of human cognitive development in which physiological and cognitive changes in aged persons can be understood as an adaptive stage of development in its own right. These changes, within an appropriate societal context, make elderly individuals better able to perform certain tasks, or at least uniquely able to provide them, in ways which increase group survival. Emphasis is given to tasks involving oral transmission of information, especially in storytelling contexts. Several hypotheses are generated suggesting that one’s memory for content and evaluation of message may be significantly increased as the teller’s age increases; supportive data are described. The utility of the theory for generating further hypotheses is demonstrated in the final section of this article.