Department of Sociology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA.
Alzheimer Dis Assoc Disord. 2024;38(3):235-240. doi: 10.1097/WAD.0000000000000629. Epub 2024 Aug 8.
Formal educational attainment, or years of schooling, has a well-established positive effect on cognitive health across the life course. We hypothesized that the content and difficulty of the curriculum influence this relationship, such that more challenging curricula in high school lead to higher levels of socioeconomic attainment in adulthood and, in turn, to better cognitive outcomes in older adulthood.
We estimated multilevel structural equation models (MSEMs) in data from 2,405 individuals who attended one of 1,312 US high schools in 1960 and participated in the Project Talent Aging Study in 2018.
A college preparatory curriculum and a greater number of semesters of math and science in high school were positively related to word recall and verbal fluency at an average age of 75. Effects were robust to controlling for adolescent cognitive ability, academic performance, socioeconomic background, and school characteristics.
We discuss the implications of these findings for educational policy.
正规教育程度，或受教育年限，对整个生命周期的认知健康有明确的积极影响。我们假设课程的内容和难度会影响这种关系，即高中更具挑战性的课程会导致成年后更高的社会经济地位，进而在老年时获得更好的认知结果。
我们使用了 1960 年参加过美国 1312 所高中之一的 2405 名个体的数据，运用多层次结构方程模型（MSEMs）进行了估计，并于 2018 年参与了人才老龄化研究。
高中阶段的大学预备课程和更多的数学和科学学期数与平均年龄为 75 岁时的单词回忆和语言流畅性呈正相关。这些影响在控制青少年认知能力、学业成绩、社会经济背景和学校特征后仍然稳健。
我们讨论了这些发现对教育政策的意义。
