Early-life education may help bolster declarative memory in old age, especially for women

ABSTRACT

Although declarative memory declines with age, sex and education might moderate these weaknesses. We investigated effects of sex and education on nonverbal declarative (recognition) memory in 704 older adults (aged 58–98, 0–17 years of education). Items were drawings of real and made-up objects. Age negatively impacted declarative memory, though this age effect was moderated by sex and object-type: it was steeper for males than females, but only for real objects. Education was positively associated with memory, but also interacted with sex and object-type: education benefited women more than men (countering the age effects, especially for women), and remembering real more than made-up objects. The findings suggest that nonverbal memory in older adults is associated negatively with age but positively with education; both effects are modulated by sex, and by whether learning relates to preexisting or new information. The study suggests downstream benefits from education, especially for girls.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• declarative memory
• education
• episodic memory
• nonverbal memory
• sex differences

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NIH R01 AG016790 (Princeton University) (subcontract to Michael Ullman), NIH R01 AG016661 (Georgetown University), NSF BCS 1439290 (Georgetown University), a Georgetown University Medical Center Partners in Research grant, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Georgetown University. We thank the Health Promotion Administration at the Ministry of Health in Taiwan for their support of this project, as well as Christos Pliatsikas for his contributions to the Discussion.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Another method for correcting for the influence of a potentially confounding factor (e.g., education) on the relationship between another factor and the dependent variable (e.g., between age and declarative memory) is to use residualized values of the dependent variable after removing the effect of the confounding factor (e.g., education). However, unlike (mixed-effects) regression models, this approach would not also provide estimates of the effect of education controlling for all other factors, or the effect of interactions between education and other factors. These were of interest in the present study, rendering this method less appropriate.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences [1439290]; Georgetown University [Graduate School of Arts and Sciences]; National Institute on Aging [R01 AG016661, R01 AG016790].