Social vulnerability and prefrontal cortical function in elderly people: a report from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Prefrontal cortical lobe function is related to social behavior in humans. We investigated whether performance on tests of prefrontal cortical function was associated with social vulnerability. Associations with non-frontal cognitive function were investigated for comparison. METHODS: 1216 participants aged 70+ of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging-2 screening examination, who also underwent detailed neuropsychological testing, comprised the study sample. Performance on WAIS-R abstraction, WAIS-R comprehension, Trails B, FAS and category verbal fluency, Block construction, Token Test and Wechsler Memory Scale Information Subset was tested in relation to the participant's level of social vulnerability using regression models adjusted for age, education, sex, frailty, MMSE score, diagnosis of depression, and use of psychoactive medications. Social vulnerability was measured by an index comprising many social problems or "deficits". RESULTS: The most socially vulnerable group had worse performance on FAS verbal fluency, generating 4.1 fewer words (95% CI: 1.8-6.4, p<0.001) than those in the least socially vulnerable group; those with intermediate social vulnerability generated 2.6 fewer words (95% CI: 0.4-4.8, p = 0.02). Social vulnerability was also associated, though less strongly, with category verbal fluency. The most socially vulnerable people had impaired performance on the Trails B, taking 37 seconds longer (95% CI: 11-63, p = 0.005). These results were independent of age, education, sex, frailty, MMSE score, depression, and psychoactive medications. Social vulnerability was not associated with performance on WAIS-R abstraction, WAIS-R comprehension, Block Design, Token Test or Wechsler Memory Scale tests. CONCLUSIONS: High social vulnerability was associated with impaired performance on verbal fluency and set shifting but not with common sense judgment, abstraction, long-term memory, constructional ability, or language comprehension. The association between social functioning and the cognitive functions subserved by prefrontal cortex warrants further study.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".