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This episode is sponsored by Blinkist.
本期节目由Blinkist赞助。
Blinkist takes all of the need-to-know information from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes. Go to Blinkist.com/SciShowPsych to learn more.
Blinkist从数千本非虚构类书籍中收集了所有需要了解的信息，并将其压缩至15分钟之内。您可登录Blinkist.com/SciShowPsych了解更多信息。
If you've reached a certain age, you might notice you're not plowing through books the way you used to.
如果你已经到了一定的年龄，你可能会注意到你不能再像以前那样埋头读书了。
And like so many things about getting older, that “certain age” comes sooner than you expect.
就像很多关于变老的事情一样，“特定年龄”会比你预想的来得更快。
It gets worse in your 60s or 70s, but some researchers have noticed a decline in reading ability starting in your 40s.
到了六七十岁时，阅读能力会变得更糟，但一些研究人员注意到，人们的阅读能力从40多岁就开始下降了。
So why do people read more slowly as they get older? Well, we're not totally sure -- the reasons seem to vary.
那么，为什么随着年龄的增长，人们的阅读速度会变慢呢？我们不能完全确定——因为原因似乎各不相同。
But understanding some of the details might actually help us tell the difference between healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease.
但了解一些细节可能会更有助于我们分辨健康老龄化和阿尔茨海默病之间的区别。
Most people experience a decline in reading speed as they get older.
随着年龄的增长，大多数人的阅读速度都会下降。
That's the case even though other mental factors tend to stay pretty strong, as long as you're otherwise healthy. Which makes it tough to pin down what's causing reading to slow down, specifically.
这是事实，即使其他精神因素影响相当强，只要你身体健康。这使得我们很难确切地找出导致阅读速度变慢的原因。
Like, most people on average tend to have their overall mental processing slow a bit as you get older.
比如，随着年龄的增长，大多数人的整体心理处理速度都会变慢。
But your memory for word meaning stays pretty consistent into old age. It's also possible that declining vision could slow you down.
但是你对单词意义的记忆直到年老的时候还是始终如一的。视力下降也有可能会令你减速。
But studies show that's a separate factor in other words, people slow down their reading even if their vision is fine. Researchers have also proposed that maybe people slow down on purpose.
但研究表明，这是一个单独的因素，换句话说，即使视力正常，人们也会放慢阅读速度。研究人员还提出，也许人们是故意放慢速度的。
That even if they don't realize it, they're slowing down to be a little more cautious about what they're taking in -- so as to avoid mistakes.
即使他们没有意识到这一点，他们也会放慢速度，对他们所接受的东西更加谨慎一点——以免犯错。
But studies haven't borne that out, either. In a 2018 study, researchers had both young and old people read at their own pace.
但研究也没有证实这一点。在2018年的一项研究中，研究人员让年轻人和老年人都按照自己的节奏阅读。
Then, they tested their comprehension after making them double their speed.
然后，让他们的速度提高一倍，再测试他们的理解力。
If older adults deliberately set a slower pace than the younger people in the study, they should make fewer mistakes when forced to speed up.
如果在研究中，与年轻人相比，老年人故意放慢节奏，那么当他们被迫加快速度时，就会少犯错误。
The older group did pace themselves a little more slowly, and made more mistakes overall, as expected. But doubling their speed made everyone, young and old, equally worse.
正如预期的那样，年长的一组确实放慢了节奏，总体上犯了更多的错误。但是加倍的速度使每个人，无论老少的都同样变得更糟了。
So it seems like the mistakes weren't a result of their self-paced speed. So if we've ruled out things like declining vision or going slower on purpose, why does reading speed decrease? It kind of depends on how old you are.
所以看起来这些错误并不是由他们自己的速度造成的。因此，如果我们排除了视力下降或故意放慢的可能性，阅读速度为什么会下降呢？部分取决于你的年龄。
Early on, between young adulthood and middle age, reading slows because all kinds of processing slows.
在早期，从青年时代到中年，阅读速度变慢是因为各种处理过程都变慢了。
Generally, we get a little bit worse at processing incoming information, and our executive function gets a little worse.
一般来说，我们处理获取的信息能力会变差，我们的执行功能也会变差。
If you control for things like working memory and processing speed, middle-aged adults can read just as quickly as younger adults.
如果你控制工作记忆和处理速度，中年人的阅读速度和青年人一样快。
One thing in particular that can trip you up a little more is an effect called visual crowding.
有一件事特别容易让你犯错，那就是所谓的视觉拥挤效应。
Most people can identify a letter sitting on its own more quickly than a letter surrounded by other letters. That's especially true for your peripheral vision.
大多数人单独识别一个字母要比识别被其他字母包围的字母更快。对于你的周边视觉来说尤其如此。
And reading requires some anticipation of what's in your peripheral vision, as your eyes move from word to word.
当你的眼睛从一个字转到另一个字时，阅读需要对你的周边视觉有一些预料。
A 2017 study published in Scientific Reports found a relationship between age, crowding, and reading speed. The researchers reported that older adults experience a bigger crowding effect.
2017年发表在《科学报告》上的一项研究发现了年龄、视觉拥挤程度和阅读速度之间的关系。研究人员报告说，老年人体验到的拥挤效应更显著。
That means letters don't need to be as close for people to start making mistakes because of crowding. And this was related to their reading speed.
这意味着字母不必靠得太近，人们就不会因拥挤而开始犯错。这与他们的阅读速度有关。
The researchers found that adults over 50 read more slowly than those in their 20s.
研究人员发现，50岁以上的成年人阅读速度比20多岁的人慢。
And the younger group likewise had a smaller crowding zone.
年轻人的一组同样存在较小的拥挤区。
That means older adults might be more distracted by other things on the page skipping ahead to irrelevant things instead of focusing on the part they need to process next. So that may be part of what slows us down.
这意味着老年人可能会更容易被页面上的其他事情分心，而不是关注他们接下来需要处理的部分。所以这可能是减慢速度的部分原因。
