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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Origins of individual differences in episodic memory in the oldest-old
— a population-based study of identical and same-sex fraternal twins aged 80 and older | | Author(s) | Boo Johansson, Keith Whitfield, Nancy L Pedersen |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 54B, no 3, May 1999 |
| Pages | pp P173-179 |
| Keywords | Memory and Reminiscence ; Biological ageing ; Twins ; Octogenarians ; Measurement ; Testing ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The relative importance of genetic and environmental influences on episodic memory in very late life was studied using a quantitative genetic approach. 125 identical and 157 same-sex twin pairs, aged 80 and older (mean age 83.3) and without a diagnosis of dementia were tested with seven memory measures: 1-2, digit span forward and backwards; 3, prose recall; 4, Thurstone's picture memory test, and the Test of Memory in Reality (MIR) test, including the subtasks of 5, free recall, 6, recognition and 7, relocation. Heritabilities, estimated by structured equation modelling, ranged from .04 to .49. The digit span backward test showed the highest heritability (h squared =.49), while heritabilities were typically lower for the long-term memory measures. The results demonstrate genetic influences on memory in the oldest-old, suggesting that the magnitude of these effects differs across memory measures. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990826225 A |
| Classmark | DB: BH: SVR: BBM: 3R: 3T: 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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