Getting the Brain into Gear. An Online Study Investigating Cognitive Reserve and Word-Finding Abilities in Healthy Ageing

Abstract

Lifetime experiences and lifestyle, such as education and engaging in leisure activities, contribute to a cognitive reserve (CR) which delays the onset of age-related cognitive decline. Word-finding difficulties have been identified as the most prominent cognitive problem in older age. Whether CR mitigates age-related word-finding difficulties is currently unknown. Using picture-naming and verbal fluency tasks, this online study aimed to investigate the effect of CR on word-finding ability in younger, middle-aged, and older adults. CR for both the period preceding and coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic was measured through years of education and questionnaires concerning the frequency of engagement in cognitive, leisure, and physical activities. Linear mixed-effect models demonstrated that older adults were less accurate at action and object naming than middle-aged and younger adults. Higher CR in middle age predicted higher accuracies for action and object naming. Hence, high CR might not only be beneficial in older age, but also in middle age. This benefit will depend on multiple factors: the underlying cognitive processes, individual general cognitive processing abilities, and whether task demands are high. Moreover, younger and middle-aged adults displayed faster object naming compared to older adults. There were no differences between CR scores for the period preceding and coinciding with the pandemic. However, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on CR and, subsequently, on word-finding ability might only become apparent in the long term. This article discusses the implications of CR in healthy ageing as well as suggestions for conducting language production studies online.

Modeling the neurocognitive dynamics of language across the lifespan

“…Longitudinal studies would therefore be more appropriate to capture all the regions potentially underlying each mechanism. Future research should also investigate age‐invariant mechanisms associated with high cognitive reserve for a more graceful language processing decline as age advances (Brosnan et al, 2023; Oosterhuis et al, 2023; Wen & Dong, 2023; Wulff et al, 2022). Further studies should specify the factors associated with the recruitment of subcortical structures, like the bilateral thalamus and left putamen, in late adulthood.…”