Abstract
The relationship between changes of elderly people’s participation in social activities and their cognitive functions was examined. Healthy, middle and upper-middle aged people (n = 407) responded to the Nagoya University Cognitive Assessment Battery and to a questionnaire inquiring about their participation in social activities. The results suggested that those whose participation in social activities increased in the last 6 months showed better verbal functioning than those whose participation was unchanged or decreased. Moreover, those whose social participation decreased showed inferior memory function compared to those whose social participation was unchanged, or increased. Furthermore, those whose social participation increased had better information processing speed than those whose social participation decreased. These results suggest that changes in social activities might act as an important signal that is indicative of the cognitive decline in elderly people, which would be useful to local health care managers in the elderly people’s community.
Highlights
Reviews on cognitive aging have stressed the importance of accumulating more data for understanding developmental changes after middle age
This is especially important because the prevention of cognitive decline in elderly people is a critical task for health managers of local government
An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted and the results showed that statistically significant difference of the group was found in “the opportunity to go out more than before, “between “increased” and “decreased” group between “increased” and “decreased” (F 1, 391 = 3.39, p = 0.03) whereas no statistical difference was identified other pairings
Summary
Reviews on cognitive aging have stressed the importance of accumulating more data for understanding developmental changes after middle age. Studies have strongly advocated the need to accumulate information in order to cultivate lifestyles to prevent early stage cognitive decline [1,2,3,4]. A number of studies have investigated lifestyles and cognitive functions in elderly. Further investigations are needed to establish if the relationship between reduced cognitive social activities and declining cognitive function is culture free, pragmatically valid, and easy to detect signals of cognitive in communities of elderly people. This is especially important because the prevention of cognitive decline in elderly people is a critical task for health managers of local government
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