Education and Cognitive Functioning Across the Life Span

Psychological Science in the Public Interest - Tập 21 Số 1 - Trang 6-41 - 2020
Martin Lövdén1,2, Laura Fratiglioni1,3, M. Maria Glymour4, Ulman Lindenberger5,6, Elliot M. Tucker‐Drob7
1Aging Research Center, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
2Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
3Stockholm Gerontology Research Center, Stockholm, Sweden
4Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco
5Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
6Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, Berlin, Germany, and London, United Kingdom
7Department of Psychology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin

Tóm tắt

Cognitive abilities are important predictors of educational and occupational performance, socioeconomic attainment, health, and longevity. Declines in cognitive abilities are linked to impairments in older adults’ everyday functions, but people differ from one another in their rates of cognitive decline over the course of adulthood and old age. Hence, identifying factors that protect against compromised late-life cognition is of great societal interest. The number of years of formal education completed by individuals is positively correlated with their cognitive function throughout adulthood and predicts lower risk of dementia late in life. These observations have led to the propositions that prolonging education might (a) affect cognitive ability and (b) attenuate aging-associated declines in cognition. We evaluate these propositions by reviewing the literature on educational attainment and cognitive aging, including recent analyses of data harmonized across multiple longitudinal cohort studies and related meta-analyses. In line with the first proposition, the evidence indicates that educational attainment has positive effects on cognitive function. We also find evidence that cognitive abilities are associated with selection into longer durations of education and that there are common factors (e.g., parental socioeconomic resources) that affect both educational attainment and cognitive development. There is likely reciprocal interplay among these factors, and among cognitive abilities, during development. Education–cognitive ability associations are apparent across the entire adult life span and across the full range of education levels, including (to some degree) tertiary education. However, contrary to the second proposition, we find that associations between education and aging-associated cognitive declines are negligible and that a threshold model of dementia can account for the association between educational attainment and late-life dementia risk. We conclude that educational attainment exerts its influences on late-life cognitive function primarily by contributing to individual differences in cognitive skills that emerge in early adulthood but persist into older age. We also note that the widespread absence of educational influences on rates of cognitive decline puts constraints on theoretical notions of cognitive aging, such as the concepts of cognitive reserve and brain maintenance. Improving the conditions that shape development during the first decades of life carries great potential for improving cognitive ability in early adulthood and for reducing public-health burdens related to cognitive aging and dementia.

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Psychological Science in the Public Interest

Tập 21 Số 1

6-41

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