The Role of Adolescent IQ and Gender in the Use of Cognitive Support for Remembering in Aging

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of adolescent IQ (AIQ) and gender in older adults' ability to use cognitive support to enhance memory. Subjects were 269 mid-1940s graduates of the same high school. Adolescent IQ scores were gathered from archives, and subjects' memory for words was tested with tasks that provided increasing cognitive support. Overall, subjects benefited from support; women recalled more words than men; and persons with a high AIQ remembered more words than persons with a lower AIQ. However, while all subjects showed gains from cognitive support, men with a lower AIQ performed worse than men with a high AIQ. Women's performance was not dependent on their AIQ. Analysis of qualitative memory indicators suggested that women and persons with a high AIQ had better encoding and retrieval operations. Men with a lower AIQ appear to be particularly vulnerable to memory deficits in aging. This may be due to low "cognitive reserve" or generally poorer episodic memory function.

The effects of gender on the retrieval of episodic and semantic components of autobiographical memory

“…; Bloise & Johnson, 2007;Small et al, 1999). In contrast, other studies have reported that women's episodic memory remains superior across different levels of retrieval support (Dixon et al, 2004;Fritsch et al, 2007;Herlitz et al, 1997;628 FUENTES AND DESROCHER Maitland et al, 2004), indicating that the gender differences observed may be due to women's superior encoding ability. The present pattern of results showing a female advantage for episodic AM only during high retrieval support is in keeping with the contention that gender differences may be related to different encoding processes (Dixon et al, 2004;Fritsch et al, 2007;Herlitz et al, 1997;Maitland et al, 2004).…”

“…Similarly, it is possible that overall intellectual ability affected participants' ability to use retrieval support to enhance AM performance. For example, although evidence has shown that women's ability to benefit from retrieval support during word list tasks is not dependent on IQ, men with lower IQ have been reported to benefit less than men with high IQ from retrieval support (Fritsch et al, 2007). Future studies examining the role of IQ and gender on AM will provide clarity on this issue.…”

“…In line with this view an examination of the pattern of memory performance exhibited by men and women during a word recall task showed that women recalled a greater number of retrievalrelated categories of words than men, but recalled the same number of encoding-related words, indicating that differential organisational retrieval operations may have been responsible for the gender differences observed (Small et al, 1999). In contrast, several studies have reported a female advantage on episodic memory tasks involving recall of words, faces, and stories across a variety of encoding and retrieval conditions (i.e., recall and recognition) (Dixon et al, 2004;Fritsch et al, 2007;Herlitz et al, 1997;Maitland, Herlitz, Nyberg, Backman, & Nilsson, 2004). 620 FUENTES AND DESROCHER These findings have led researchers to conclude that the gender differences observed in episodic memory stem from differences in encoding rather than retrieval operations (Herlitz et al, 1997;Maitland et al, 2004).…”

“…Based on prior findings of women's superior episodic recall (Buckner & Fivush, 1998;Niedzwienska, 2003;Pillemer et al, 2003;Wang et al, 2011), it was hypothesised that the AMs recalled by women during the free recall condition would contain a greater amount of episodic details. Given the mixed findings reported by studies examining the effects of gender during different conditions of retrieval support (Bloise & Johnson, 2007;Dixon et al, 2004;Fritsch et al, 2007;Herlitz et al, 1997;Maitland et al, 2004), the analyses examining this issue were exploratory in nature. Examination of the gender effects on semantic recall was also exploratory due to fact that this study is the first to study this topic within the domain of AM.…”

The Relation of Obesity to Performance in Verbal Abilities, Processing Speed, and Cognitive Flexibility in Old Age: The Role of Cognitive Reserve

“…via education). Evidence for such an initial contribution to cognitive reserve comes from studies showing that higher educational attainment and higher childhood IQ are associated with higher performance in multiple cognitive domains such as memory and executive functioning in old age [5,6,7,8,9]. In addition, a cognitively engaged lifestyle during adulthood further contributes to the buildup of cognitive reserve.…”