Estimated Age Effects in Athletic Events and Chess

Rates of decline are estimated using record bests by age for chess and for various track and field, road running, and swimming events. Using a fairly flexible functional form, the estimates show linear percent decline between age 35 and about age 70 and then quadratic decline after that. Chess shows...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Experimental aging research 2007-01, Vol.33 (1), p.37-57
Main Author: Fair, Ray C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Aging - physiology
Biological and medical sciences
Developmental psychology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Linear Models
Male
Middle Aged
Muscle, Skeletal - physiology
Physical Endurance - physiology
Physical Fitness - physiology
Play and Playthings - psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Running - physiology
Swimming - physiology
Track and Field - physiology
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Summary:Rates of decline are estimated using record bests by age for chess and for various track and field, road running, and swimming events. Using a fairly flexible functional form, the estimates show linear percent decline between age 35 and about age 70 and then quadratic decline after that. Chess shows much less decline than the physical activities. Rates of decline are generally larger for the longer distances, and for swimming they are larger for women than for men. An advantage of using best-performance records to estimate rates of decline is that the records are generally based on very large samples. In addition, the age range is large. In this study the age range is 35 to 100 for swimming, 35 to 98 for track and field and running, and 35 to 94 for chess. The estimates also do not suffer from traditional forms of selection bias.
ISSN:0361-073X
1096-4657
DOI:10.1080/03610730601006305