On the stability with age of anagram forming

Twelve young and 12 old subscribers to an Italian magazine of riddles were invited by mail to form an anagram from a string of meaningful words consisting of 30 letters. Each of the participants was classified as either "overskilled" or "normal". All of the overskilled subjects, regardless of age, employed the 30 letters, whereas only the 50% of the remaining subjects did so. Even stronger differences were seen with regard to the number of complete anagrams. The overskilled elderly outscored the young adults, but the latter paid more attention to the quality of the anagrams. The article confirms previous results on the stability with age of anagram ability.