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Going to college is a no-brainer for those who can afford it, but higher education actually tends to speed up mental decline when it comes to fumbling for words later in life.

Participants in a new study, all more than 70 years old, were tested up to four times between 1993 and 2000 on their ability to recall 10 common words read aloud to them. Those with more education were found to have a steeper decline over the years in their ability to remember the list, according to a new study detailed in the current issue of the journal Research on Aging.

The meaning of the results is less then clear, however.

Fewer memory tricks

The mechanism for this is tricky. Individuals with more education tend to have a higher starting point in their word memory, and so may initially remember more total words than their less educated peers, said study director Eileen Crimmins of the University of Southern California.

“The more education you have, the more words you'll know to begin with,” Crimmins told LiveScience.

But the more you know, the more you have to lose. The rate from test-year to test-year at which the more educated participants lost their word-recall ability was proportionately faster, with both groups finishing with nearly identical word-recall capabilities at the study's end.

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