Gender Selectively Mediates the Association Between Sex and Memory in Cognitively Normal Older Adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background and Objectives Sex and gender are important topics of increasing interest in aging and dementia research. Few studies have jointly examined sex (as a biological attribute) and gender (as a sociocultural and behavioral characteristic) within a single study. We explored a novel data mining approach to include both sex and gender as potentially related influences in memory aging research. Research Design and Methods Participants were 746 cognitively normal older adults from the Victoria Longitudinal Study. First, we adapted the Gender Outcomes INternational Group: To Further Well-being Development (GOING-FWD) framework—which is informed by gender dimensions of the Women’s Health Research Network—to identify, extract, and operationalize gender-related variables in the database. Second, we applied principal component analysis (PCA) to a pool of potential gender variables for creating empirically derived gender-related components. Third, we verified the expected pattern of sex differences in memory performance and evaluated each gender-related component as a potential mediator of the observed sex–memory association. Results Systematic data mining produced a roster of potential gender-related variables, 56 of which corresponded to gender dimensions represented in the GOING-FWD framework. The PCA revealed 6 gender-related components (n indicators = 37): Manual Non-Routine Household Tasks, Subjective Memory Beliefs, Leisure Free Time, Social and Routine Household Management, Health Perceptions and Practices, and Brain Games. We observed sex differences in latent memory performance whereby females outperformed males. Sex differences in memory performance were mediated by Manual Non-Routine Household Tasks, Social and Routine Household Management, and Brain Games. Follow-up analyses showed that education also mediated the sex–memory association. Discussion and Implications We show that (i) data mining can identify and operationalize gender-related variables in archival aging and dementia databases, (ii) these variables can be examined for associations with sex, and (iii) sex differences in memory performance are mediated by selected facets of gender.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".