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
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Authors
Martin, Mike
Author (Corporation)
Publication date
2009
Typ of student thesis
Course of study
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Type
01A - Journal article
Editors
Editor (Corporation)
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Parent work
Current Aging Science
Special issue
DOI of the original publication
Link
Series
Series number
Volume
2
Issue / Number
3
Pages / Duration
200-204
Patent number
Publisher / Publishing institution
Bentham
Place of publication / Event location
Edition
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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 pairedassociates learning tasks, but not in
speed of processing tasks.
Keywords
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ISBN
ISSN
1874-6098
1874-6128
1874-6128
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
No
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
License
Citation
Schumacher Alvelo, V., & Martin, M. (2009). 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. Current Aging Science, 2(3), 200–204. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874609810902030200