title: Comparing age effects in normally and extremely highly educated and intellectually engaged 65 - 80 year-olds: potential protection from deficit through educational and intellectual activities across the lifespan.
abstract: Education and cognitive activity have been suggested to protect against cognitive decline in old age. However, little is known about the long-term effects of extremely high levels of education and intellectual activity across the lifespan. The present study investigated the extent to which these two variables may moderate the age-related differences in cognitive performance in old adults. Therefore, story recall, paired-associates learning, reading span and letter digit performance of 62 university professors (mean age = 72.47) were compared with those of a representative sample of 196 participants of the Zurich Longitudinal Study of Cognitive Aging (mean age = 73.04). The results demonstrate that the highly educated sample performed significantly better than the normally educated sample in the paired-associates learning and reading span test. Furthermore, age effects were found in the letter digit as well as in the paired-associates learning test. While the normally educated sample demonstrated an age-related decrease in the paired-associates learning test, the performance of the highly educated sample actually increased with increasing age. These findings suggest that extremely high levels of education and intellectual activity may postpone age-related deficits in paired-associates learning tasks, but not in speed of processing tasks.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Department of Gerontopsychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland. v.schumacher@psychologie.uzh.ch
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Schumacher
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martin
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging; D003071:Cognition; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D004522:Educational Status; D005178:Faculty; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D008136:Longevity; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D011932:Reading; D012179:Retirement; D013557:Switzerland