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P‐177: Leisure activities are associated with cognition in community dwelling very elderly
Author(s) -
Beeri Michal Schnaider,
Wang Joy,
Schmeidler James,
Hannigan Christine,
Lally Rachel,
Silverman Jeremy M.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2007.04.140
Subject(s) - psychology , association (psychology) , active listening , partial correlation , dementia , cognition , leisure activity , boston naming test , test (biology) , executive functions , correlation , recall , statistical significance , neuropsychology , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , gerontology , psychiatry , social psychology , medicine , disease , cognitive psychology , paleontology , geometry , mathematics , communication , pathology , psychotherapist , biology
Background: Recent findings suggest that socially or mentally stimulating activity may protect against dementia. Objective: To examine, cross sectionally, the association of several leisure activities with cognitive functioning in a non-demented community dwelling very elderly sample from an ongoing longitudinal study on risk and protective factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Methods: Factor analyses of the neuropsychological variables yielded two rotated varimax factors: memory (primarily immediate and delayed recall, recognition, and Savings) and executive functioning (primarily Trail Making Tests A and B, and Shipley Vocabulary Test). The 10 leisure activities (watching news on TV, listening to radio, games, theater, courses, social gatherings, travel, gardening, art with hands, and writing) were not strongly inter-correlated. Multiple partial correlation assessed the association of the leisure activities with the neuropsychological factors, controlling for age, sex, and education. Results: 148 subjects (61% women, mean age 87.3 5.8 and mean education 15.1 3.2) had complete data. For memory, the multiple partial correlation did not reach statistical significance (R .32; F(10,134) 1.56; p .13). The only significant partial correlation for individual leisure activities was for art with hands (r .21; p .01). For executive functioning, the significant association (R .39; F(10,134) 2.33; p .02) reflected writing (r .23; p .005), (not) watching news on TV (r -.18; p .03), listening to radio (r .17; p .04), and travel (r .16; p .05). Partial correlations with writing of the Shipley Vocabulary Test (r .24; p .003) was stronger than with the Trails A (r -.15; p .07) and B (r -.16; p .06) suggesting that the association with the executive functioning factor reflected cognition rather than simple motor ability. Conclusions: In this interim sample, cognition was associated with increasing frequency of several leisure activities, after adjusting for age, sex, and years of education, in non-demented community dwelling subjects who are very old and thus at high risk for dementia. Leisure activities are a modifiable life style characteristic that might contribute to prevention of dementia.