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When it comes to judging how old a person is, simply by how they look, the older you are, the more accurate it is.

During tests, in which computer generated faces were shown to volunteers of various ages, older people were able to determine ages more accurately.

The researchers believe that as people age, they spend more time thinking about ageing compared to younger people and this makes them more likely to recognise the signs.

Volunteers aged between 18 and 25, and 56 to 75, were shown 4,000 computer-generated images of faces (pictured) by researchers Glasgow. Each participant was asked to pick, an 'old' face from a series. The results revealed older volunteers had a more nuanced understanding of age, than the younger participants

In the two-part study, researchers from the University of Glasgow showed volunteers 4,000 computer-generated images of faces.

The images used a base face, created by averaging 84 male and female faces, overlaid with varying layers of random patterns known as Gabor noise, which darkened and brightened certain areas of the face.

The volunteers were divided into two groups; one aged 18 to 25, and the other aged 56 to 75.

Each participant was asked to pick, an 'old' face from three simultaneously presented faces, with perceived age affected by factors such as darkened areas between the nose and mouth, which could appear as wrinkles to the observer.

Other trials repeated the experiment with 'young' and 'middle-age' choices.

Over the course of the experiments, the researchers were able to average the noise templates to visualise the information each participant uses to estimate old age.

Author Dr Nicola van Rijsbergen said: 'Our research allows us to demonstrate the mental representations in the mind that predict age judgments.

'For example, both age groups associated old age with wrinkles from the corners of the nose to the mouth, but only older participants represented the left and right jowls in old age.

'It's difficult to say for sure exactly why this is happening, but one theory we have is that older people spend more time thinking about age than younger people do, which leads to a more nuanced mental representation of the ageing process.'

The second part of the study presented faces 'aged' using the noise templates to a separate group of volunteers before asking them to judge their perceived ages between 18 and 80.

The results revealed that older volunteers had a more nuanced understanding of age, suggesting a broader spread of ages, than the younger ones.

Dr van Rijsbergen added: 'As a scientist, it's very exciting to be able to visualise what's going on in people's heads with techniques such as these.

The second part of the study presented faces to a separate group of volunteers before asking them to judge their perceived ages between 18 and 80. The researchers believe that as people age, they spend more time thinking about ageing compared to younger people and this makes them more likely to recognise the signs

'This process gives us the tools to get a much clearer perspective on mental representations of faces and there is much more we can learn from similar studies in the future.

'Perhaps businesses who require employees to carefully evaluate other people might consider the benefits of employing older people.

'It seems that, contrary to commonly-held prejudices, older people more accurately depict socially relevant information than their younger counterparts.'

The research was supported by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The paper, With Age Comes Representational Wisdom In Social Signals, is published in Current Biology.