The Relationship between Cognitive Reserve and Math Abilities

Abstract

Cognitive Reserve is the capital of knowledge and experiences that an individual acquires over their life-span. Cognitive Reserve is strictly related to Brain Reserve, which is the ability of the brain to cope with damage. These two concepts could explain many phenomena such as the modality of onset in dementia or the different degree of impairment in cognitive abilities in aging. The aim of this study is to verify the effect of Cognitive Reserve, as measured by a questionnaire, on a variety of numerical abilities (number comprehension, reading and writing numbers, rules and principles, mental calculations and written calculations), in a group of healthy older people (aged 65-98 years). Sixty older individuals were interviewed with the Cognitive Reserve Index questionnaire (CRIq), and assessed with the Numerical Activities of Daily Living battery (NADL), which included formal tasks on math abilities, an informal test on math, one interview with the participant, and one interview with a relative on the perceived math abilities. We also took into account the years of education, as another proxy for Cognitive Reserve. In the multiple regression analyses on all formal tests, CRIq scores did not significantly predict math performance. Other variables, i.e., years of education and Mini-Mental State Examination score, accounted better for math performance on NADL. Only a subsection of CRIq, CRIq-Working-activity, was found to predict performance on a NADL subtest assessing informal use of math in daily life. These results show that education might better explain abstract math functions in late life than other aspects related to Cognitive Reserve, such as lifestyle or occupational attainment.

Keywords: aging; cognitive reserve; daily living activities; healthy aging; mathematical abilities; maths.

Figure 1

Partial effects of regression models. The figure shows the partial effects of the significant terms of the regression models with NADL scores as dependent variables. The figure displays: the NADL-F task names (first column), the effect of age (second column), the effect of Years of education (third column), the effect of MMSE (fourth column), and the effect of CRIq-WorkingActivity (fifth column). Effects not displayed were not significant in the regression analyses. The black line in each plot represents the predicted score at the task. The gray bands around the lines represent point-wise confidence bands around the prediction. The black dots indicate the observed data for each participant (each dot represent a participant). A small jitter was applied to the observed values for a better visualization.