Evans D A, Beckett L A, Albert M S, Hebert L E, Scherr P A, Funkenstein H H, Taylor J O
Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA.
Ann Epidemiol. 1993 Jan;3(1):71-7. doi: 10.1016/1047-2797(93)90012-s.
In a community population of persons over the age of 65, cognitive function was assessed using brief performance tests on two occasions 3 years apart. Those with fewer years of formal education consistently had greater declines in cognitive function, independently of age, birthplace, language of interview, occupation, and income. These prospective findings suggest that low educational attainment or a correlate predicts cognitive decline. It is not clear, however, whether this relation represents a direct effect of education on future cognition, whether education might be related to occurrence of a disease leading to cognitive decline in older persons, or whether education might be a surrogate for some variable not included in the study.
在一个65岁以上人群的社区中，相隔3年分两次使用简易性能测试评估认知功能。受正规教育年限较少的人，无论年龄、出生地、访谈语言、职业和收入如何，认知功能的下降幅度始终更大。这些前瞻性研究结果表明，低教育程度或相关因素可预测认知能力下降。然而，尚不清楚这种关系是否代表教育对未来认知的直接影响，教育是否可能与导致老年人认知能力下降的疾病发生有关，或者教育是否可能是该研究未纳入的某些变量的替代指标。
