Meaning & use
mental age
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Meanings
nouncountabletechnical
A measure of a person's thinking ability expressed as the age at which an average child reaches that same level.
Grammar: Usually used with "a" or a number: a mental age of seven; it is rarely plural.
Patterns
- a mental age of + number
- have a mental age of something
- somebody's mental age
The test gave the boy a mental age of nine, even though he was twelve.
Psychologists once compared a child's mental age with their real age to work out an intelligence score.
Her mental age on the reading tasks was well above her years.
nounsingularinformaldisapproving
Used informally, the level of maturity someone shows in their behavior, often said of an adult acting childishly.
Grammar: Often used in a joking or critical way after "the mental age of": he has the mental age of a five-year-old.
Patterns
- the mental age of a + age
- act as if you have the mental age of something
He argues about the TV remote like he has the mental age of a toddler.
Come on, stop behaving as if your mental age were six.
Common combinations
- have a mental age of
- The child was found to have a mental age of eight.
- a mental age of five
- In the old test, a mental age of five meant the child answered questions typical of five-year-olds.
- mental age versus chronological age
- Teachers compared mental age with chronological age when placing pupils.
- measure somebody's mental age
- Early psychologists tried to measure a person's mental age with written puzzles.
Synonyms and how they differ
- developmental level
- A broader, more modern term for how far a child's skills have progressed; it does not have to be given as a number of years.
- intellectual ability
- Refers to overall thinking power rather than to a score expressed as an age, so it fits better in general writing.
- maturity
- Talks about emotional and social grown-upness, not about measured thinking skills, so it is the natural choice in everyday speech.
Word family
- chronological age noun
- A person's actual age in years, often contrasted with mental age.
- intelligence quotient noun
- A score worked out from test results, historically by comparing mental age with real age.
Commonly confused: mental age or emotional age?
mental age vs emotional age
Emotional age describes how well someone handles feelings; mental age is about thinking and problem-solving, so the two are not interchangeable.
Practice
The psychologist said the seven-year-old had a mental age of ten. What does this mean?
Choose one answer.
Mental age is about tested thinking level, not actual years lived, so option 1 confuses it with chronological age. Option 3 describes a birthday, and option 4 is about schooling, neither of which the term refers to.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “mental age”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.