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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Cognitive decline in high-functioning older adults
— reserve or ascertainment bias? | | Author(s) | H Tuokko, D D Garrett, I McDowell |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 7, no 4, July 2003 |
| Pages | pp 259-270 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Cognitive impairment ; Dementia ; Educational status [elderly] ; Longitudinal surveys ; Canada. |
| Annotation | With data from a prospective, population-based study of incident dementia, the Canadian Study of Health and Aging (CSHA), the authors classified participants as being high- (HF) or low-functioning (LF) in three ways: educational and occupational attainments, and estimated premorbid IQ. They observed that, in accordance with both the BRC and cognitive reserve models, fewer HF older people were diagnosed with dementia after 5 years. Contrary to expectation, no difference on rate of memory deterioration was observed between those HF and LF people who exhibited mild cognitive impairment at CHSA-1. However, HF people who subsequently were diagnosed with dementia (CHSA-2) showed more rapid decline on 5 of the 6 memory measures over time than did LF persons diagnosed with dementia at CHSA-2. When performance on measures of memory functioning at CHSA-1 were examined for highly educated older people, significantly more of those with dementia at CHSA-2 (n=59) had scores falling within or below the average range in comparison to normative standards than those who continued to show no cognitive impairment (n=159). The findings suggest that the lower incidence of dementia for HF people may be primarily the result of ascertainment bias, not underlying differences in brain or cognitive reserve. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-030806223 A |
| Classmark | E4: EA: F:V: 3J: 7S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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