Health numeracy and cognitive decline in advanced age

ABSTRACT

The study aimed at investigating health numeracy in cognitively well performing healthy participants aged from 50 to 95 years as well as in participants with cognitive impairment, but no dementia (CIND). In cognitively well performing participants (n = 401), demographic variables and cognitive abilities (executive functions, reading comprehension, mental calculation, vocabulary) were associated with health numeracy. Older age, lower education, female gender as well as lower cognitive functions predicted low health numeracy. The effect of older age was partly mediated by executive functions and calculation abilities. Participants with CIND (n = 51) performed significantly lower than healthy controls in health numeracy. The findings suggest that cognitively well performing old individuals have difficulties in understanding health-related numerical information. The risk of misunderstanding health-related numerical information is increased in persons with CIND. As these population groups are frequently involved in health care decisions, particular attention has to be paid to providing numerical information in comprehensible form.

Keywords:

• Health numeracy
• Aging
• Mild cognitive impairment
• Executive functions
• Calculation

Notes

2. ¹The present study is part of a larger investigation on cognitive functions in advanced age. Further tasks and results are reported elsewhere.

3. ²Numeracy scores did not differ between participants scoring below cut-off in the GDS and those scoring above.

4. ³Data available from 402 participants.