Cross-lagged relation of leisure activity participation to Trail Making Test performance 6 years later: Differential patterns in old age and very old age.

Andreas Ihle,Fanny Vallet,Delphine Fagot,Marie Baeriswyl,Michel Oris,Nathalie Mella,Jürgen Maurer,Julia Sauter,Matthias Kliegel,Nicola Ballhausen

doi:10.1037/neu0000497

Abstract

We investigated cross-lagged relations between leisure activity participation and Trail Making Test (TMT) performance over 6 years and whether those reciprocal associations differed between individuals. We analyzed data from 232 participants tested on performance in TMT Parts A and B as well as interviewed on leisure activity participation in 2 waves 6 years apart. Mean age in the Wave 1 was 73.42 years. Participants were also tested on vocabulary (Mill Hill scale) as a proxy indicator of crystallized intelligence and reported information on early and midlife cognitive reserve markers (education and occupation). Latent cross-lagged models were applied to investigate potential reciprocal activity-TMT relationships. The relation of leisure activity participation predicting TMT performance 6 years later was significantly larger than was the relation of TMT performance predicting later leisure activity participation. Statistically comparing different moderator groups revealed that this pattern was evident both in individuals with low education and in those with high education but, notably, emerged in only young-old adults (but not in old-old adults), in individuals with a low cognitive level of job in midlife (but not in those with a high cognitive level of job in midlife), and in individuals with high scores in vocabulary (but not in those with low scores in vocabulary). Late-life leisure activity participation may predict later cognitive status in terms of TMT performance, but individuals may markedly differ with respect to such effects. Implications for current cognitive reserve and neuropsychological aging research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Highlights

A major goal in current gerontological neuropsychology is to understand how interindividual differences in cognitive health in old age emerge (Opdebeeck, Martyr, & Clare, 2016)
With respect to an individual’s potential for preserving cognitive functioning in old age, the cognitive reserve concept postulates that lifelong experiences, including educational and occupational attainment, and leisure activities in later life, stimulate brain development which increases the reserve capacity that may compensate for brain damage, neurological loss, and pathological decline such as dementia (Stern, 2002, 2017)
Corroborating the predictions of the cognitive reserve concept, evidence showed that greater cognitive stimulation throughout the life course such as longer education in early life, cognitively demanding jobs in midlife, and current cognitively stimulating leisure activities in midlife and old age contributes to the accumulation of cognitive reserve over the life course and is related to better cognitive functioning such as memory and executive functioning in old age as well as a lower risk of developing dementia and later age at dementia onset (Adam, Bonsang, Grotz, & Perelman, 2013; Hertzog, Kramer, Wilson, & Lindenberger, 2008; Ihle et al, 2015; Karp et al, 2006; Paillard-Borg, Fratiglioni, Xu, Winblad, & Wang, 2012; Schneeweis, Skirbekk, & Winter-Ebmer, 2014; Wilson et al, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

A major goal in current gerontological neuropsychology is to understand how interindividual differences in cognitive health in old age emerge (Opdebeeck, Martyr, & Clare, 2016). With respect to an individual’s potential for preserving cognitive functioning in old age, the cognitive reserve concept postulates that lifelong experiences, including educational and occupational attainment, and leisure activities in later life, stimulate brain development which increases the reserve capacity that may compensate for brain damage, neurological loss, and pathological decline such as dementia (Stern, 2002, 2017). Two central, though so far unanswered and still debated questions in cognitive reserve research concern (a) whether activity predicts cognitive functioning over time when taking the reciprocal relation of cognitive functioning predicting activity over time into account, and, (b) which factors may moderate this relation in determining which of these two pathways is predominant (Lifshitz-Vahav, Shrira, & Bodner, 2017)

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