Super‐agers in memory are not necessarily super‐agers in other cognitive domains

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundSuperAgers are individuals who, despite their advanced age, retain superior cognitive performance. Although there is no consensus on how to define SuperAgers, identifying such individuals remains an important research question as they may help us identify protective factors against cognitive impairment that may be amenable to intervention strategies. Here we explore whether ‘SuperAgers’ who are the best performers in a test of memory, show equally exceptional performance in other cognitive domains.MethodParticipants are from The 90+ Study, a longitudinal study of aging and dementia in people 90 and older. Out of 1,134 participants in the study, the 349 with normal cognition at baseline were included in these analyses. Cognitive diagnosis was based on clinical examination and mental status exam independent of the tests investigated here. We evaluated performance in tests of verbal memory (9‐item California Verbal Learning Test‐long delay [CVLT]), executive function (Trails B), language (15‐item Boston naming test [BNT]), and attention (Digit Span backward [DSB]). For each test, we determined whether participants were in the top quartile of performance (SuperAgers). We investigated whether SuperAgers according to memory were also SuperAgers in other domains. We also tested whether being a SuperAger was related to age, sex, or education.Result47 participants were in the top quartile of CVLT with a perfect score of 9 and were classified as memory‐SuperAgers. Of these 47 participants, 8 (17%) were also in the top quartile for Trails B, 14 (30%) in the top quartile for BNT, and 12 (26%) in the top quartile of DSB (Figure). None of the 349 participants were in the top quartile for all four tests and only 13 participants (4%) were in the top quartile for three tests (Figure). Younger age was associated with being a SuperAger for CVLT, Trails B, & BNT and female sex was associated with being a memory‐SuperAger (CVLT) (Table). Education was not associated with being a SuperAger for any test.ConclusionIn this oldest‐old cohort, those who perform exceptionally well in a memory test do not perform equally well in other cognitive tests suggesting that the biological and sociodemographic determinants of superior performance will vary by cognitive domain.