Neighborhood environment and cognition in older adults: Exploring the mediating effect of physical activity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Emerging evidence suggests neighborhood environment may shape both health behaviors and outcomes. Neighborhood environment could be particularly influential for community‐dwelling older adults who prefer to age in place. Recent studies report that neighborhood social and built environment characteristics significantly influence older adults’ cognition. However, the underlying mechanisms by which neighborhood environment affects cognition are not well understood. Regular physical activity in late life is associated with a lower risk for cognitive decline and may be affected by neighborhood amenities and resources. This study examined how the neighborhood social and built environment affects cognition in older adulthood and explored whether physical activity levels mediated these relationships. Method The cross‐sectional analyses included older adults from Wave 2 of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (N = 3,196; mean age = 73.17, SD = 7.34; 52.6% female; median education = high school diploma; 77.3% Caucasian). We tested a structural equation model to examine associations among neighborhood social and built environment and cognition as measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. Built environment was operationalized as a latent variable of living density, litter, noise, traffic, pollution, and conditions of respondents’ building and other buildings nearby. The social environment latent variable was constructed with social cohesion, social ties, and perceived neighborhood danger. We tested whether self‐reported frequency of rigorous physical activity mediated these environment‐cognition relationships. Result The results indicated (1) greater disadvantages in the neighborhood built environment were associated with worse cognition (est = ‐0.05, p < .001) and with lower levels of physical activity (est = ‐0.03, p = .001); (2) greater advantages in the neighborhood social environment were associated with better cognition (est = 0.03, p < .001) and higher levels of physical activity (est = 0.02, p < .001); however, (3) physical activity levels were not significantly associated with cognition (est = ‐0.02, p = .17). Conclusion These results highlight the influence of neighborhood environment on both physical activity and cognition in older adulthood. While physical activity was not an underlying mechanism by which environment influences cognition, future studies should test for mediation using objectively‐measured physical activity.
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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 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".