Roberts Andrea L, Qiu Xinye, McAlaine Kaleigh A, Germine Laura T, Rotem Ran S, Weisskopf Marc G
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 15;15(1):2105. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-79083-x.
Childhood cognitively stimulating activities have been associated with higher cognitive function in late life. Whether activities in early or late childhood are more salient, and whether activities are associated with specific cognitive domains is unknown. Participants retrospectively reported cognitively stimulating activities at ages 6, 12, and 18 years. 4,198 participants were aged 55 to 77 years at cognitive testing. Six tasks measured overall cognitive function, processing speed, visual short-term memory, attention, cognitive control, episodic memory, working memory, perception, vocabulary, and verbal reasoning. Cognitively stimulating activities across childhood were associated with higher cognitive scores (highest versus lowest quartile, beta = 0.18 SD, 95% CI = 0.12, 0.23). In models adjusted for activities at each age, only age 18 activities were associated with overall cognition. The association of activities with cognitive function was strongly positive at the lowest levels of activities, with little association at middle and high levels of activities. A test of crystalized intelligence was most strongly associated with activities; tests assessing processing speed, visual short-term memory, visual working memory, and sustained attention were least associated. If the associations we found are causal, increasing cognitively stimulating activities in the late teen years among those with very few activities may benefit late life cognitive health.
童年时期的认知刺激活动与晚年较高的认知功能相关。儿童早期或晚期的活动哪个更显著，以及这些活动是否与特定认知领域相关尚不清楚。参与者回顾性报告了6岁、12岁和18岁时的认知刺激活动。4198名参与者在认知测试时年龄为55至77岁。六项任务测量了整体认知功能、处理速度、视觉短期记忆、注意力、认知控制、情景记忆、工作记忆、感知、词汇和语言推理。童年时期的认知刺激活动与较高的认知分数相关（最高四分位数与最低四分位数相比，β=0.18标准差，95%置信区间=0.12，0.23）。在针对每个年龄的活动进行调整的模型中，只有18岁时的活动与整体认知相关。在活动水平最低时，活动与认知功能的关联非常积极，而在活动水平中等和较高时，关联很小。一项晶体智力测试与活动的关联最为强烈；评估处理速度、视觉短期记忆、视觉工作记忆和持续注意力的测试关联最小。如果我们发现的关联是因果关系，那么在活动极少的青少年后期增加认知刺激活动可能有益于晚年的认知健康。
