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AGE AND BEHAVIOR: PROBLEM SOLVING – INFLEXIBILITY – CREATIVITY IN RELATION TO AGE - ARTIFACT IN METHOD?

Lehman's work was criticized by Dennis (1956a, 1958). Dennis leveled many arguments, but the most cogent one was that Lehman combined information pertaining to men of different longevities, and, in so doing, exaggerated or even manufactured the age decrements which he reported. Since all the significant contributions of short-lived people occurred only in the early decades, while those of the long-lived people occurred during both their early and late decades of life, the practice of combining longevities made for artifacts. To demonstrate this, Dennis (1956b, 1966), in two studies, analyzed only the creations of people who lived long lives. The results of both these studies were different from those typified by Lehman. Dennis showed that peak performance years were found throughout most of the adult life-span.
Dennis' analyses were based upon quantity of output and Lehman's work emphasized superior quality output. Lehman (1956) argued that because older people put out relatively few high-quality products, the effect of combining information pertaining to men of different longevities was small. Dennis (1966) recognized that the difference in emphasis between quality and quantity may be the key to the difference in results between his and Lehman's studies, but he contended that it is difficult to arrive at an unbiased evaluation of quality (Dennis). His point was that an analysis of quality through biographies and citations contains systematic errors favoring man's early work, artificially making for the data Lehman reported. Dennis suggested that, first, an historian of science may be more likely to mention a young man's pioneering work than his subsequent investigations which develop and validate the earlier ones. Second, critics and historians find it harder to evaluate recent work than older work and tend not to designate the more recent work (i.e., the work of later life) as masterwork. Third, because of the increased number of creative workers from one generation to the next, competition increases, making it difficult for a man's later work to be evaluated as superior. Dennis (1958) provided data which he believed demonstrated his contention of systematic errors in the analysis of quality through biographies and citations, but Lehman maintained that all Dennis showed was that great contributions have been increasing at a slower rate than have lesser ones.
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