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[P4–298]: SEMANTIC MEMORY AND LITERACY ARE BETTER MODERATORS THAN EDUCATION ON COGNITIVE AGING
Author(s) -
Bertola Laiss,
Ávila Rafaela,
Bicalho Maria Aparecida,
MalloyDiniz Leandro F.
Publication year - 2017
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.2017.06.2167
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , literacy , moderation , dementia , developmental psychology , sociocultural evolution , semantic memory , psychological resilience , clinical psychology , social psychology , medicine , psychiatry , pedagogy , disease , pathology , sociology , anthropology
screening that is not greatly affected by schooling and proved to be a good instrument to differentiate subjects with and without dementia. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of age and schooling on Brief Cognitive Screening Battery (BCSB) performance in elderly residents in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Methods:The sample was composed of 470 elderly individuals, all of whom were evaluated using the BCSB. The results were analyzed by groups that were divided by age and schooling. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed to examine differences in performance between the age and schooling groups and interactions between age and schooling. Correlations between cognitive variables, age, and schoolingwere also analyzed.Results:The sample consisted of 420 women (89.4%) and 50 men (10.6%). The mean age was 72.77 6 7.06 years, with average schooling of 9.546 5.32 years. The ANOVA showed that elderly individuals whowere older than 80 years of age presented worse performance on memory tasks compared with the younger age groups. With regard to schooling, elderly individuals with low schooling presented worse performance on the Verbal Fluency and Clock Drawing tests and on the Mini Mental State Examination. The two-way ANOVA revealed a significant age schooling interaction for Mini Mental State Examination scores. Conclusions: The age x schooling interaction impacted performance of the elderly in the evaluation of global cognitive function. The present results indicated a dissociation, in which age affected memory function, and schooling affected other cognitive functions.