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Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory
BACKGROUND: Dementias in high income countries are set to be the third major burden of disease even as older people are increasingly required to think for themselves how to provide for their lives in retirement. Meanwhile the period of older age continues to extend with increase in life expectancy....
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2015
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4699214/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26713627 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144907 |
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author | Tampubolon, Gindo |
author_facet | Tampubolon, Gindo |
author_sort | Tampubolon, Gindo |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Dementias in high income countries are set to be the third major burden of disease even as older people are increasingly required to think for themselves how to provide for their lives in retirement. Meanwhile the period of older age continues to extend with increase in life expectancy. This challenge demands an understanding of how cognition changes over an extended period in later life. But studying cognitive ageing in the population faces a difficulty from the fact that older respondents are liable to leave (attrite) before study completion. This study tested three hypotheses: trajectories of cognitive ageing in Britain show an improvement beyond the age of 50; and they are lifted by secular improvement in cognition across cohorts; lastly they are susceptible to distortion due to attrition. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this paper studied trajectories of episodic memory of Britons aged 50–89 from 2002 to 2013 (N = 5931). Using joint models the analysis found that levels of episodic memory follow a curvilinear shape, not a steady decline, in later life. The findings also revealed secular improvement in cognitive ageing such that as a cohort is being replaced episodic memory levels in the population improve. The analysis lastly demonstrated that failure to simultaneously model attrition can produce distorted pictures of cognitive ageing. CONCLUSION: Old age in this century is not necessarily a period dominated by cognitive decline. In identifying behavioural factors associated with better cognitive ageing, such as social connections of traditional and online kinds, the paper raises possibilities of mustering an adequate response to the cognition challenge. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4699214 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46992142016-01-14 Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory Tampubolon, Gindo PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Dementias in high income countries are set to be the third major burden of disease even as older people are increasingly required to think for themselves how to provide for their lives in retirement. Meanwhile the period of older age continues to extend with increase in life expectancy. This challenge demands an understanding of how cognition changes over an extended period in later life. But studying cognitive ageing in the population faces a difficulty from the fact that older respondents are liable to leave (attrite) before study completion. This study tested three hypotheses: trajectories of cognitive ageing in Britain show an improvement beyond the age of 50; and they are lifted by secular improvement in cognition across cohorts; lastly they are susceptible to distortion due to attrition. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, this paper studied trajectories of episodic memory of Britons aged 50–89 from 2002 to 2013 (N = 5931). Using joint models the analysis found that levels of episodic memory follow a curvilinear shape, not a steady decline, in later life. The findings also revealed secular improvement in cognitive ageing such that as a cohort is being replaced episodic memory levels in the population improve. The analysis lastly demonstrated that failure to simultaneously model attrition can produce distorted pictures of cognitive ageing. CONCLUSION: Old age in this century is not necessarily a period dominated by cognitive decline. In identifying behavioural factors associated with better cognitive ageing, such as social connections of traditional and online kinds, the paper raises possibilities of mustering an adequate response to the cognition challenge. Public Library of Science 2015-12-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4699214/ /pubmed/26713627 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144907 Text en © 2015 Gindo Tampubolon http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Tampubolon, Gindo Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory |
title | Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory |
title_full | Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory |
title_fullStr | Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory |
title_full_unstemmed | Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory |
title_short | Cognitive Ageing in Great Britain in the New Century: Cohort Differences in Episodic Memory |
title_sort | cognitive ageing in great britain in the new century: cohort differences in episodic memory |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4699214/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26713627 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0144907 |
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