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. 2016 Oct;28(5):959-64.
doi: 10.1007/s40520-015-0385-5. Epub 2015 May 26.

Dual-task costs in aging are predicted by formal education

Antonino Vallesi  1   2
Affiliations

Dual-task costs in aging are predicted by formal education

Antonino Vallesi. Aging Clin Exp Res. 2016 Oct.

Abstract

The capacity to manage different concurrent tasks at the same time decays in older adults. There is however a considerable amount of inter-individual variability in this capacity even in healthy aging. The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate which factors help explaining this variability. A dual-task paradigm was administered to 64 older adults and 31 younger controls. In this paradigm, a primary simple response time task had to be carried out either by itself (single-task condition) or while concurrently performing a secondary subtraction task (dual-task condition). Dual-task costs were operationalized by comparing dual-task and single-task conditions. Older adults showed higher dual-task interference than younger controls. Within the older group, the influence of age, general cognitive abilities, performance on the secondary task, and years of formal education was assessed with a multiple regression analysis. The results showed that years of formal education in older adults were the best predictor that significantly explained a portion of the variance in dual-task performance. These findings extend previous literature by showing that formal education provides an important dose of cognitive reserve, which is useful to successfully implement cognitive dual-task management despite aging.

Keywords: Cognitive aging; Cognitive reserve; Dual-task interference; Education level; Executive functions; Multiple regression.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Scatterplot of the bivariate correlation between years of formal education (y) and dual-task costs in ms (x)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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