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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Cognitive functioning in healthy aging
— the role of reserve and lifestyle factors early in life | | Author(s) | Thomas Fritsch, McKee J McClendon, Kathleen A Smyth |
| Journal title | The Gerontologist, vol 47, no 3, June 2007 |
| Pages | pp 307-322 |
| Source | http://www.geron.org |
| Keywords | Mental health [elderly] ; Cognitive processes ; Good Health ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Life span ; Longitudinal surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | According to the reserve perspective on cognitive ageing, individuals are born with or can develop resources that help them resist normal and disease-related cognitive changes that occur in ageing. This research considers three questions about reserve. Is it static throughout the life course or dynamic? Can reserve be increased at any point in life, or are there optimal periods at which to increase it? Does participation in different types of leisure and occupational activities in early and midlife have different effects depending on specific domains of late-life cognitive functioning? The authors link early cognitive and activity data with cognitive data for 349 participants in the Cleveland Longitudinal Aging Studies of Students who left the same school in the mid-1940s. All underwent telephone cognitive screening and provided access to adolescent IQ scores. Path analysis was used to evaluate the complex relationships between early life, mid-life and late-life variables. Education and adolescent IQ had strong direct effects on global cognitive functioning, episodic memory, verbal fluency, and processing speed. Physical and social activities did not predict any cognitive measure. This study suggests that reserve is dynamic, but it is most amenable to change in early life. An active, engaged lifestyle, emphasising mental activity and educational pursuits in early life, can have a positive impact on cognitive functioning in later life. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-080402210 A |
| Classmark | D: DA: CD: F: BG6: 3J: 7T |
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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