The Role of Lifetime Exposures across Cognitive Domains in Barbados Using Data From the SABE Study

TL;DR

This study examines how lifetime exposures like education, sex, and job type influence cognitive aging in Barbadian older adults, highlighting modifiable factors that can delay cognitive decline.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how specific lifetime exposures impact cognitive domains and aging in a Caribbean population, emphasizing modifiable factors.

Findings

Age effects vary across cognitive domains.

Higher education and mentally demanding jobs are linked to better late-life cognition.

Modifiable lifetime exposures can mitigate age-related cognitive decline.

Abstract

This study characterized the effects of aging on individual cognitive domains and how sex, job type, and years of education alter the age effect on older adults from Barbados. This was an analysis of the cross-sectional data collected as part of the SABE Study (Health, Well-being and Ageing) in 2006. The loss of a single point in each of the individual cognitive domains assessed using the mini-mental state exam served as dependent variables. Independent variables included age, sex, years of education, job type, and the interactions with age in a series of logistic regression analyses. The study aimed to identify which factors altered the effect of age on cognitive performance and which directly affected performance. Results demonstrated that the effect of age differed across the cognitive domains. In addition, sex, education, and job type all differentially affected cognitive performance in an additive, formative manner. The most consistent finding was that high years of education coupled with employment requiring mostly mental effort was the best combination for maintaining high levels of cognitive performance in late life. The results demonstrate that adverse age effects on cognitive performance may be minimized or delayed through modifiable lifetime exposures in the people of Barbados.