The Impact of Cognitive Reserve on Baseline Neuropsychological Functioning of Older Adults Without Dementia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: For decades, a key question that has been posed by the cognitive aging literature is how do we preserve our cognitive abilities throughout the lifespan? This thesis examined the influence of cognitive reserve (CR) on different domains of cognitive functioning in a sample of older adults with varying levels of cognitive functioning, ranging from normal cognitive aging to mild cognitive impairment. To date, little research has used latent variable modelling to examine the potential relationships between cognitive reserve and cognition in older adults without dementia. Objectives: To examine the (1) cumulative and (2) independent effects of three well-established proxies of CR—educational attainment, mental workplace demands, crystallized intelligence—on performance across several neuropsychological tests assessing verbal and visual memory, executive functioning, visuospatial processing, language, and global cognitive status. Method: The current study utilized archival data from 232 older adult patients seen at geriatric specialist hospital in Ontario, Canada. To evaluate hypothesized relationships between CR and late-life cognition, two structural equation models were constructed. Subsequent relative weight and multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the individual relationships between CR proxies and late-life cognition. Results: As predicted, CR was associated with better performance on a cognitive screener, however, both hypothesized models demonstrated poor fit. Overall, CR was most important in predicting older adults’ higher-order cognitive abilities and crystallized intelligence was the only CR proxy that was a significant predictor of late-life cognition, beyond sociodemographic factors. Significance: Findings from this study add to our current understanding of CR by demonstrating that in older age, certain areas of cognitive functioning may be more influenced by CR over others and that dynamic proxies of CR, such as crystallized intelligence may better capture the relationship between CR and late-life cognition.
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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 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".