Abstract
How specific activities influence cognitive decline among different age groups, especially the late middle-aged and the early old, remains inadequately studied. To examine the association between specific activities with trajectories of cognitive functions in different age groups in China. A longitudinal cohort study was conducted based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Mixed effects growth models were applied to analyze the association between specific activities and cognitive functions. Interacting with friends (infrequent: β= 0.13, confidence interval [CI] = 0.03 to 0.22; daily: β= 0.19, CI = 0.09 to 0.28), playing Mah-jong or other games (infrequent: β= 0.12, CI = 0.02 to 0.22; daily:β= 0.26, CI = 0.10 to 0.42), infrequent providing help to others (β= 0.24, CI = 0.11 to 0.37), and going to a sport (infrequent: β= 0.31, CI = 0.08 to 0.54); daily: β= 0.22, CI = 0.05 to 0.38) are significantly associated with participants' memory. Infrequently playing Mah-jong or other games (β= 0.30, CI = 0.17 to 0.43) and daily sports (β= 0.24, CI = 0.03 to 0.45) are significantly associated with better mental status. Effect of each activity varies among population of different age, education level, gender, and residence. This study identifies four social activities that are associated with better cognitive functions, and provides a comprehensive, in-depth understanding on the specific protective effect of each activity among different subgroups.
Highlights
Dementia increasingly creates burden for both the patients and their caregivers [1, 2], while no effective treatment has been found [3]
This study identifies four social activities that are associated with better cognitive functions, and provides a comprehensive, in-depth understanding on the specific protective effect of each activity among different subgroups
From the unconditional means model, the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was 0.56 for mental status and 0.47 for memory, suggesting that 56% of the total variation in mental status score was attributable to differences between individuals and 47% in memory was attributable to differences between individuals
Summary
Dementia increasingly creates burden for both the patients and their caregivers [1, 2], while no effective treatment has been found [3]. Scholars have found that overall involvement in leisure activities is associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment [5,6,7,8,9,10,11] and dementia [12, 13] among older adults. For research findings to be translated into feasible interventions, it is necessary to study the context-specific association between activities and cognitive trajectories. Emerging evidence indicates that leisure activities are associated with higher risk of cognitive impairment and dementia among the older adults, but how specific activities influence cognitive decline among different age groups, especially the late middle-aged and the early old, remains inadequately studied.
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