Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, Philosophy, University of Cagliari, Via Is Mirrionis 1, 09123, Cagliari, Italy.
Department of Mechanical, Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Cagliari, Via Is Mirrionis 1, 09123, Cagliari, Italy.
Aging Clin Exp Res. 2021 May;33(5):1377-1382. doi: 10.1007/s40520-020-01632-x. Epub 2020 Jun 18.
The role played by cognitive reserve for the maintenance of numeracy skills in late adulthood is still not sufficiently explored.
This study mainly investigated whether cognitive reserve (i.e., vocabulary) mediates on the relationship between non-verbal reasoning and addition and multiplication skills of older individuals. Moreover, the impact of schooling and gender on written calculation was examined, controlling for the effect of cognitive decline.
One hundred and six 68-94-year-old participants completed a battery of tests assessing numeracy, executive functions, and cognitive reserve skills.
Significant correlations were found between age, cognitive reserve, numeracy, and executive functions measures. Besides, mediation analyses indicated that cognitive reserve and non-verbal reasoning explain 23% and 29% of the variance in written addition and multiplication conditions, respectively. Finally, more educated individuals performed better numeracy tasks, whereas the solution of additions and multiplications was not impact by gender.
Cognitive reserve impacts numeracy in late adulthood.
认知储备在维持老年人的计算能力方面所起的作用仍未得到充分的探究。
本研究主要探讨了认知储备（即词汇量）是否在非言语推理与老年人的加法和乘法技能之间起中介作用。此外，还考察了教育程度和性别对书面计算的影响，控制了认知能力下降的影响。
106 名 68-94 岁的参与者完成了一系列测试，评估了他们的计算能力、执行功能和认知储备技能。
年龄、认知储备、计算能力和执行功能测试之间存在显著的相关性。此外，中介分析表明，认知储备和非言语推理分别解释了书面加法和乘法条件下 23%和 29%的方差。最后，受教育程度更高的个体在计算任务上表现更好，而性别对加法和乘法的解决没有影响。
认知储备对老年人的计算能力有影响。
