Latest news with #Scullin
The Star
5 days ago
- Health
- The Star
How older people are reaping brain benefits from new tech
It started with a high school typing course. Wanda Woods enrolled because her father advised that typing proficiency would lead to jobs. Sure enough, the federal Environmental Protection Agency hired her as an after-school worker while she was still a junior. Her supervisor 'sat me down and put me on a machine called a word processor,' Woods, now 67, recalled. 'It was big and bulky and used magnetic cards to store information. I thought, 'I kinda like this'.' Decades later, she was still liking it. In 2012 – the first year that more than half of Americans over 65 used the Internet – she started a computer training business. Now she is an instructor with Senior Planet in Denver, an AARP-supported effort to help older people learn and stay abreast of technology. Woods has no plans to retire. Staying involved with tech 'keeps me in the know, too', she said. Some neuroscientists researching the effects of technology on older adults are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have contended – not always enthusiastically – with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more common. Given decades of alarms about technology's threats to our brains and well-being – sometimes called 'digital dementia' – one might expect to start seeing negative effects. The opposite appears true. 'Among the digital pioneer generation, use of everyday digital technology has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia,' said Michael Scullin, a cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor University. It's almost akin to hearing from a nutritionist that bacon is good for you. 'It flips the script that technology is always bad,' said Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. 'It's refreshing and provocative and poses a hypothesis that deserves further research.' Scullin and Jared Benge, a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, were co-authors of a recent analysis investigating the effects of technology use on people over 50 (average age: 69). They found that those who used computers, smartphones, the Internet or a mix did better on cognitive tests, with lower rates of cognitive impairment or dementia diagnoses, than those who avoided technology or used it less often. 'Normally, you see a lot of variability across studies,' Scullin said. But in this analysis of 57 studies involving more than 411,000 seniors, published in Nature Human Behavior, almost 90% of the studies found that technology had a protective cognitive effect. Much of the apprehension about technology and cognition arose from research on children and adolescents, whose brains are still developing. 'There's pretty compelling data that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental health or behavioral problems' when young people are overexposed to screens and digital devices, Scullin said. Older adults' brains are also malleable, but less so. And those who began grappling with technology in midlife had already learned 'foundational abilities and skills,' Scullin said. Then, to participate in a swiftly evolving society, they had to learn a whole lot more. Years of online brain-training experiments that last a few weeks or months have produced varying results. Often, they improve the ability to perform the task in question without enhancing other skills. 'I tend to be pretty sceptical' of their benefit, said Walter Boot, a psychologist at the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. 'Cognition is really hard to change.' The new analysis, however, reflects 'technology use in the wild,' he said, with adults 'having to adapt to a rapidly changing technological environment' over several decades. He found the study's conclusions 'plausible.' Analyses like this can't determine causality. Does technology improve older people's cognition, or do people with low cognitive ability avoid technology? Is tech adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop? 'We still don't know if it's chicken or egg,' Doraiswamy said. Yet when Scullin and Benge accounted for health, education, socioeconomic status and other demographic variables, they still found significantly higher cognitive ability among older digital technology users. What might explain the apparent connection? 'These devices represent complex new challenges,' Scullin said. 'If you don't give up on them, if you push through the frustration, you're engaging in the same challenges that studies have shown to be cognitively beneficial.' Even handling the constant updates, the troubleshooting and the sometimes maddening new operating systems might prove advantageous. 'Having to re learn something is another positive mental challenge,' he said. Still, digital technology may also protect brain health by fostering social connections, known to help stave off cognitive decline. Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss, as Scullin and Benge found in a smartphone study, while its apps help preserve functional abilities like shopping and banking. Numerous studies have shown that while the number of people with dementia is increasing as the population ages, the proportion of older adults who develop dementia has been falling in the United States and in several European countries. Researchers have attributed the decline to a variety of factors, including reduced smoking, higher education levels and better blood pressure treatments. Possibly, Doraiswamy said, engaging with technology has been part of the pattern. Of course, digital technologies present risks, too. Online fraud and scams target older adults, and while they are less apt to report fraud losses than younger people, the amounts they lose are much higher, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Disinformation poses its own hazards. And as with users of any age, more is not necessarily better. 'If you're bingeing Netflix 10 hours a day, you may lose social connections,' Doraiswamy pointed out. Technology, he noted, cannot 'substitute for other brain-healthy activities' like exercising and eating sensibly. An unanswered question: Will this supposed benefit extend to subsequent generations, digital natives more comfortable with the technology their grandparents often labored over? 'The technology is not static – it still changes,' Boot said. 'So maybe it's not a one-time effect.' But the change tech has wrought 'follows a pattern', he added. 'A new technology gets introduced, and there's a kind of panic.' From television and video games to the latest and perhaps scariest development, artificial intelligence, 'a lot of it is an overblown initial reaction,' he said. 'Then, over time, we see it's not so bad and may actually have benefits.' Like most people her age, Woods grew up in an analog world of paper checks and paper maps. But as she moved from one employer to another through the '80s and '90s, she progressed to IBM desktops and mastered Lotus 1-2-3 and Windows 3.1. Along the way, her personal life turned digital, too: a home desktop when her sons needed one for school, a cellphone after she and her husband couldn't summon help for a roadside flat, a smartwatch to track her steps. These days Woods pays bills and shops online, uses a digital calendar and group-texts her relatives. And she seems unafraid of AI, the most earthshaking new tech. Last year, Woods turned to AI chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT to plan an RV excursion to South Carolina. Now, she's using them to arrange a family cruise celebrating her fiftieth wedding anniversary. – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
NZ Herald
12-08-2025
- Health
- NZ Herald
How older people are reaping brain benefits from new tech
Now she is an instructor with Senior Planet in Denver, an AARP-supported effort to help older people learn and stay abreast of technology. Woods has no plans to retire. Staying involved with tech 'keeps me in the know, too,' she said. Some neuroscientists researching the effects of technology on older adults are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have contended – not always enthusiastically – with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more common. Given decades of alarms about technology's threats to our brains and wellbeing – sometimes called 'digital dementia' – one might expect to start seeing negative effects. The opposite appears true. 'Among the digital pioneer generation, use of everyday digital technology has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia,' said Michael Scullin, a cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor University. It's almost akin to hearing from a nutritionist that bacon is good for you. 'It flips the script that technology is always bad,' said Dr Murali Doraiswamy, director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. 'It's refreshing and provocative and poses a hypothesis that deserves further research.' Scullin and Jared Benge, a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, were co-authors of a recent analysis investigating the effects of technology use on people over 50 (average age: 69). They found that those who used computers, smartphones, the internet or a mix did better on cognitive tests, with lower rates of cognitive impairment or dementia diagnoses, than those who avoided technology or used it less often. 'Normally, you see a lot of variability across studies,' Scullin said. But in this analysis of 57 studies involving more than 411,000 seniors, published in Nature Human Behaviour, almost 90% of the studies found that technology had a protective cognitive effect. Much of the apprehension about technology and cognition arose from research on children and adolescents, whose brains are still developing. 'There's pretty compelling data that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental health or behavioural problems' when young people are overexposed to screens and digital devices, Scullin said. Older adults' brains are also malleable, but less so. And those who began grappling with technology in midlife had already learned 'foundational abilities and skills,' Scullin said. Then, to participate in a swiftly evolving society, they had to learn a whole lot more. Years of online brain-training experiments that last a few weeks or months have produced varying results. Often, they improve the ability to perform the task in question without enhancing other skills. 'I tend to be pretty sceptical' of their benefit, said Walter Boot, a psychologist at the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. 'Cognition is really hard to change.' The new analysis, however, reflects 'technology use in the wild,' he said, with adults 'having to adapt to a rapidly changing technological environment' over several decades. He found the study's conclusions 'plausible'. Analyses like this can't determine causality. Does technology improve older people's cognition, or do people with low cognitive ability avoid technology? Is tech adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop? 'We still don't know if it's chicken or egg,' Doraiswamy said. Yet when Scullin and Benge accounted for health, education, socioeconomic status and other demographic variables, they still found significantly higher cognitive ability among older digital technology users. What might explain the apparent connection? 'These devices represent complex new challenges,' Scullin said. 'If you don't give up on them, if you push through the frustration, you're engaging in the same challenges that studies have shown to be cognitively beneficial.' Even handling the constant updates, the troubleshooting and the sometimes maddening new operating systems might prove advantageous. 'Having to relearn something is another positive mental challenge,' he said. Still, digital technology may also protect brain health by fostering social connections, known to help stave off cognitive decline. Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss, as Scullin and Benge found in a smartphone study, while its apps help preserve functional abilities like shopping and banking. Numerous studies have shown that while the number of people with dementia is increasing as the population ages, the proportion of older adults who develop dementia has been falling in the United States and in several European countries. Researchers have attributed the decline to a variety of factors, including reduced smoking, higher education levels and better blood pressure treatments. Possibly, Doraiswamy said, engaging with technology has been part of the pattern. Of course, digital technologies present risks, too. Online fraud and scams target older adults, and while they are less apt to report fraud losses than younger people, the amounts they lose are much higher, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Disinformation poses its own hazards. And as with users of any age, more is not necessarily better. 'If you're bingeing Netflix 10 hours a day, you may lose social connections,' Doraiswamy pointed out. Technology, he noted, cannot 'substitute for other brain-healthy activities' like exercising and eating sensibly. An unanswered question: will this supposed benefit extend to subsequent generations, digital natives more comfortable with the technology their grandparents often laboured over? 'The technology is not static – it still changes,' Boot said. 'So maybe it's not a one-time effect.' But the change tech has wrought 'follows a pattern,' he added. 'A new technology gets introduced, and there's a kind of panic.' From television and video games to the latest and perhaps scariest development, artificial intelligence, 'a lot of it is an overblown initial reaction,' he said. 'Then, over time, we see it's not so bad and may actually have benefits.' Like most people her age, Woods grew up in an analogue world of paper cheques and paper maps. But as she moved from one employer to another through the '80s and '90s, she progressed to IBM desktops and mastered Lotus 1-2-3 and Windows 3.1. Along the way, her personal life turned digital, too: a home desktop when her sons needed one for school, a cellphone after she and her husband couldn't summon help for a roadside flat, a smartwatch to track her steps. These days Woods pays bills and shops online, uses a digital calendar and group-texts her relatives. And she seems unafraid of AI, the most earthshaking new tech. Last year, Woods turned to AI chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT to plan an RV excursion to South Carolina. Now, she's using them to arrange a family cruise celebrating her fiftieth wedding anniversary. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Paula Span ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
Economic Times
10-08-2025
- Health
- Economic Times
How older people are reaping brain benefits from new tech
NYT News Service It started with a high school typing course. Wanda Woods enrolled because her father advised that typing proficiency would lead to jobs. Sure enough, the federal Environmental Protection Agency hired her as an after-school worker while she was still a junior. Her supervisor "sat me down and put me on a machine called a word processor," Woods, now 67, recalled. "It was big and bulky and used magnetic cards to store information. I thought, 'I kinda like this.'" Decades later, she was still liking it. In 2012 -- the first year that more than half of Americans over 65 used the internet -- she started a computer training business. Now she is an instructor with Senior Planet in Denver, an AARP-supported effort to help older people learn and stay abreast of technology. Woods has no plans to retire. Staying involved with tech "keeps me in the know, too," she said. Some neuroscientists researching the effects of technology on older adults are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have contended -- not always enthusiastically -- with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more common. Given decades of alarms about technology's threats to our brains and well-being -- sometimes called "digital dementia" -- one might expect to start seeing negative effects. The opposite appears true. "Among the digital pioneer generation, use of everyday digital technology has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia," said Michael Scullin, a cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor University. It's almost akin to hearing from a nutritionist that bacon is good for you. "It flips the script that technology is always bad," said Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. "It's refreshing and provocative and poses a hypothesis that deserves further research." Scullin and Jared Benge, a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, were co-authors of a recent analysis investigating the effects of technology use on people over 50 (average age: 69). They found that those who used computers, smartphones, the internet or a mix did better on cognitive tests, with lower rates of cognitive impairment or dementia diagnoses, than those who avoided technology or used it less often. "Normally, you see a lot of variability across studies," Scullin said. But in this analysis of 57 studies involving more than 411,000 seniors, published in Nature Human Behavior, almost 90% of the studies found that technology had a protective cognitive effect. Much of the apprehension about technology and cognition arose from research on children and adolescents, whose brains are still developing. "There's pretty compelling data that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental health or behavioral problems" when young people are overexposed to screens and digital devices, Scullin said. Older adults' brains are also malleable, but less so. And those who began grappling with technology in midlife had already learned "foundational abilities and skills," Scullin said. Then, to participate in a swiftly evolving society, they had to learn a whole lot more. Years of online brain-training experiments that last a few weeks or months have produced varying results. Often, they improve the ability to perform the task in question without enhancing other skills. "I tend to be pretty skeptical" of their benefit, said Walter Boot, a psychologist at the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. "Cognition is really hard to change." The new analysis, however, reflects "technology use in the wild," he said, with adults "having to adapt to a rapidly changing technological environment" over several decades. He found the study's conclusions "plausible." Analyses like this can't determine causality. Does technology improve older people's cognition, or do people with low cognitive ability avoid technology? Is tech adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop? "We still don't know if it's chicken or egg," Doraiswamy said. Yet when Scullin and Benge accounted for health, education, socioeconomic status and other demographic variables, they still found significantly higher cognitive ability among older digital technology users. What might explain the apparent connection? "These devices represent complex new challenges," Scullin said. "If you don't give up on them, if you push through the frustration, you're engaging in the same challenges that studies have shown to be cognitively beneficial." Even handling the constant updates, the troubleshooting and the sometimes maddening new operating systems might prove advantageous. "Having to re learn something is another positive mental challenge," he said. Still, digital technology may also protect brain health by fostering social connections, known to help stave off cognitive decline. Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss, as Scullin and Benge found in a smartphone study, while its apps help preserve functional abilities like shopping and banking. Numerous studies have shown that while the number of people with dementia is increasing as the population ages, the proportion of older adults who develop dementia has been falling in the United States and in several European countries. Researchers have attributed the decline to a variety of factors, including reduced smoking, higher education levels and better blood pressure treatments. Possibly, Doraiswamy said, engaging with technology has been part of the pattern. Of course, digital technologies present risks, too. Online fraud and scams target older adults, and while they are less apt to report fraud losses than younger people, the amounts they lose are much higher, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Disinformation poses its own hazards. And as with users of any age, more is not necessarily better. "If you're bingeing Netflix 10 hours a day, you may lose social connections," Doraiswamy pointed out. Technology, he noted, cannot "substitute for other brain-healthy activities" like exercising and eating sensibly. Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. Can Coforge's ambition to lead the IT Industry become a reality? 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Time of India
10-08-2025
- Health
- Time of India
How older people are reaping brain benefits from new tech
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads It started with a high school typing course. Wanda Woods enrolled because her father advised that typing proficiency would lead to jobs. Sure enough, the federal Environmental Protection Agency hired her as an after-school worker while she was still a supervisor "sat me down and put me on a machine called a word processor," Woods , now 67, recalled. "It was big and bulky and used magnetic cards to store information. I thought, 'I kinda like this.'"Decades later, she was still liking it. In 2012 -- the first year that more than half of Americans over 65 used the internet -- she started a computer training she is an instructor with Senior Planet in Denver, an AARP-supported effort to help older people learn and stay abreast of technology. Woods has no plans to retire. Staying involved with tech "keeps me in the know, too," she neuroscientists researching the effects of technology on older adults are inclined to agree. The first cohort of seniors to have contended -- not always enthusiastically -- with a digital society has reached the age when cognitive impairment becomes more decades of alarms about technology's threats to our brains and well-being -- sometimes called "digital dementia" -- one might expect to start seeing negative opposite appears true. "Among the digital pioneer generation, use of everyday digital technology has been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia," said Michael Scullin , a cognitive neuroscientist at Baylor almost akin to hearing from a nutritionist that bacon is good for you."It flips the script that technology is always bad," said Dr. Murali Doraiswamy , director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University, who was not involved with the study. "It's refreshing and provocative and poses a hypothesis that deserves further research."Scullin and Jared Benge , a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, were co-authors of a recent analysis investigating the effects of technology use on people over 50 (average age: 69).They found that those who used computers, smartphones, the internet or a mix did better on cognitive tests, with lower rates of cognitive impairment or dementia diagnoses, than those who avoided technology or used it less often."Normally, you see a lot of variability across studies," Scullin said. But in this analysis of 57 studies involving more than 411,000 seniors, published in Nature Human Behavior, almost 90% of the studies found that technology had a protective cognitive of the apprehension about technology and cognition arose from research on children and adolescents, whose brains are still developing."There's pretty compelling data that difficulties can emerge with attention or mental health or behavioral problems" when young people are overexposed to screens and digital devices, Scullin adults' brains are also malleable, but less so. And those who began grappling with technology in midlife had already learned "foundational abilities and skills," Scullin to participate in a swiftly evolving society, they had to learn a whole lot of online brain-training experiments that last a few weeks or months have produced varying results. Often, they improve the ability to perform the task in question without enhancing other skills."I tend to be pretty skeptical" of their benefit, said Walter Boot, a psychologist at the Center on Aging and Behavioral Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. "Cognition is really hard to change."The new analysis, however, reflects "technology use in the wild," he said, with adults "having to adapt to a rapidly changing technological environment" over several decades. He found the study's conclusions "plausible."Analyses like this can't determine causality. Does technology improve older people's cognition, or do people with low cognitive ability avoid technology? Is tech adoption just a proxy for enough wealth to buy a laptop?"We still don't know if it's chicken or egg," Doraiswamy when Scullin and Benge accounted for health, education, socioeconomic status and other demographic variables, they still found significantly higher cognitive ability among older digital technology might explain the apparent connection?"These devices represent complex new challenges," Scullin said. "If you don't give up on them, if you push through the frustration, you're engaging in the same challenges that studies have shown to be cognitively beneficial."Even handling the constant updates, the troubleshooting and the sometimes maddening new operating systems might prove advantageous. "Having to relearn something is another positive mental challenge," he digital technology may also protect brain health by fostering social connections, known to help stave off cognitive decline. Or its reminders and prompts could partially compensate for memory loss, as Scullin and Benge found in a smartphone study, while its apps help preserve functional abilities like shopping and studies have shown that while the number of people with dementia is increasing as the population ages, the proportion of older adults who develop dementia has been falling in the United States and in several European have attributed the decline to a variety of factors, including reduced smoking, higher education levels and better blood pressure treatments. Possibly, Doraiswamy said, engaging with technology has been part of the course, digital technologies present risks, too. Online fraud and scams target older adults, and while they are less apt to report fraud losses than younger people, the amounts they lose are much higher, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Disinformation poses its own as with users of any age, more is not necessarily better."If you're bingeing Netflix 10 hours a day, you may lose social connections," Doraiswamy pointed out. Technology, he noted, cannot "substitute for other brain-healthy activities" like exercising and eating sensibly.
Perth Now
26-04-2025
- Business
- Perth Now
Libs channel Labor's unfriendly ghost, Jim Scullin
Labor coming to power after a decade of right-wing rule only to be rocked by global economic crisis, cost-of-living woes and the imposition of US tariffs. It's a familiar tale, right? In fact, the very circumstances that have ushered us towards the 2025 federal election? Yet it was these same events which also played out in 1931 for Labor prime minister James Scullin as he railed against the devastating impact of the Great Depression. Potentially telling though is that despite having swept to power on a record majority, the former grocer and newspaper editor also holds the unfortunate distinction of being in charge the last time a federal government lost power after just one term in office. It's no coincidence Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has repeatedly referred to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the campaign trail as presiding over Australia's "worst government since 1931". History may be against the coalition winning the election after its short stint on the opposition benches but Mr Dutton hopes discontent over Australia's economic fortunes resonates at the ballot box the same way it did almost a century ago. Cost-of-living pressures following the Wall Street crash of 1929, just two days after Mr Scullin was sworn in, and the ensuing Great Depression were central to his demise, according to Australian National University political historian Joshua Black. "The federal government didn't feel it had the tools in its arsenal to respond in a way it wanted and that alienated a number of supporters," he tells AAP. "It was quite unpopular in the country and it was a difficult period for government." But economic crisis wasn't the only factor that led to the abrupt downfall of Scullin's administration. The forced resignation of treasurer "Red" Ted Theodore after the Mungana affair, a fraud and dishonesty scandal linked to his Queensland mining interests, didn't help. Neither did defections to the fledgling United Australia Party led by Scullin's successor Joe Lyons, which rendered him a minority leader and dependent on the volatile support of fiery demagogue Jack Lang. A second fracture with Lang supporter Jack Beasley at the helm triggered a fatal parliamentary showdown, notable also because first lady Sarah Scullin was on hand to witness the vote. A snap poll followed, with Scullin and Labor defeated in a landslide. While many in the present-day coalition have sought to draw a link to 1931, Dr Black says there isn't a direct comparison as such. "There are more obvious comparisons of the recent past, like Whitlam, and then in the 1980s in the decisions with tackling inflation," he says. "But I don't think the comparison with 1931 is a useful one. "In terms of the shambolic nature of the Scullin government itself, this term has been relatively disciplined for government messaging and ministers not leaking and staying on message." That said, the "rhymes of history" were apt to darken the Albanese government's dreams, according to veteran author and journalist Graeme Dobell in 2022. "Labor knows Whitlam's three years in power were bedevilled by the slowing world economy, just as Jim Scullin's Labor government was hit by the times ... to be smashed by the Great Depression and party splits," he then wrote. "A looming global recession threatens to revisit the three-year hoodoo on Albanese." Even so, the current administration has undoubtedly made it its business to be around for a long time rather than a good one, as Whitlam's crash-or-crash-through style was often accused of aspiring to. It was a lesson learned before Albanese came to office, according to Rudd and Gillard government treasurer Wayne Swan. "The Scullin government lacked the necessary policy tools to deal with the crisis, we did not," he told parliament in his 2019 valedictory speech. "While it was bullied into austerity, we would not be. We knew from the failures of the 1930s and 1990s what recessions do." The latter reference, Paul Keating's "recession we had to have", was then echoed within a year of Kevin Rudd's first appointment in 2007 as prime minister and the arrival of the global financial crisis. "Is it the fate of Labor governments in Australia to come to office in times of economic crisis?" politics academics Rob Manwaring and Emily Foley recently asked. "The centre-left has long had a complex relationship with capitalism," they noted. "The Albanese government is again on the back foot and under intense pressure. "In the current era, voters are punishing incumbents and the economic gods certainly enjoy playing with Labor governments." But history shows voters often like to give first-term governments the benefit of the doubt, Dr Black says. It's why oppositions aren't so readily returned to office. There's also the fact winning from opposition remains a challenging prospect so soon after an election loss, he says. "There's kind of a political pain oppositions experience after losing government, there's a difficult adjustment to make," he adds. "Political parties get comfortable with the trappings of power and they have to learn to live without and have less resources and money and less natural access to the media. "The difficulty of reorientating decisions and learning from mistakes of the past makes it so difficult for oppositions to win government on first go."
