Journal Article

Cognitive performance trends among European older adults: exploring variations across cohorts, gender, and educational levels (2007–2017)

Ford, Katherine J., Fors, Stefan, Leist, Anja K., Rehnberg, Johan

2024

Overview

Background This study explores recent cohort trends in cognitive performance among older Europeans from 2007 to 2017, addressing three key questions: (1) Did cognitive performance improve universally and across the performance distribution during this period? (2) Did these improvements occur across educational levels and for both men and women? (3) Can established risk factors explain these performance gains? Methods Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) across 12 European countries, we assessed immediate recall, delayed recall, and verbal fluency in individuals aged 60 to 94 in both 2007 and 2017 ( n  = 32 773). Differences between the two time points were estimated with linear mixed effects regression models and quantile regression. Results Cognitive performance improved in all age groups, across educational levels, and for both men and women between 2007 and 2017. Notably, improvements were more pronounced at the upper end of the performance distribution for delayed recall and verbal fluency. Education explained approximately 20% of the observed improvements. Risk factors did not explain the observed improvements. Conclusions European cohorts of both younger-old and older adults continue to exhibit improvements in cognitive performance. Variation in the size of the cohort improvements across the performance distributions in delayed recall and in verbal fluency may contribute to growing inequalities in cognitive outcomes. Future research should further investigate the potential heterogeneity in cognitive performance gains. Trial registration Not applicable.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: 20th century / Academic achievement / Adults / Aged / Aged, 80 and over / Aging / Biostatistics / Body mass index / Cognition - physiology / Cognition in old age / Cognitive ability / Cognitive tasks / Cohort improvement / Cohort Studies / Delayed recall / Demographic aspects / Education / Educational Status / Environmental Health / Epidemiology / Europe / Exercise / Female / Flynn effect / Gender differences / Health Surveys / Heterogeneity / Humans / Immediate recall / Male / Medicine / Medicine & Public Health / Men / Mental depression / Mental health / Middle Aged / Older people / Population / Psychological aspects / Public Health / Recall / Regression analysis / Regression models / Risk Factors / Sex differences (Psychology) / Sex Factors / Socioeconomic factors / Surveys / Trends / Vaccine / Variables / Verbal fluency / Women