Biologically based senescence processes and cumulative opportunities for experience collectively give rise to profound changes in cognition in later adulthood, the trajectories of which vary considerably across individuals. This review focuses on how cognitive aging is shaped by engagement—defined as the ongoing investment of personal resources (e.g., time, attention) to activities, social networks, and experiences—through the adult life span. We review evidence for the effects of different forms of engagement on cognitive aging and consider plausible mechanistic pathways for such effects. Working within an ecological framework, we consider “design solutions” for lifestyle engagement to shape adult cognitive development given the necessary trade-offs endemic to goal-directed systems (e.g., current needs versus long-term preparation, flexibility versus robustness, exploration versus exploitation). Given the limited evidence for broad-based effects of skill training on late-life cognitive health, we argue that a promising paradigm for successful cognitive aging will be to probe synergistic effects of engagement on cognitive aging. Recent developments in personal technology offer promise for innovation in intervention and in measurement. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, Volume 4 is December 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Beyond “Use It or Lose It”: The Impact of Engagement on Cognitive Aging

Cognition and Cognitive Reserve.

The engagement in cognitively stimulating activities has been found to be associated with slower rates of cognitive decline in old age. In which type of activities people engage in may depend on their personality traits, which thus might have an impact on later cognitive fitness. To study these potential links, we examined the associations between Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness; different types of leisure activities (e.g., social, mental, physical); and cognitive ability levels and decline in older adults. Analyses were based on a sample of young-old (60-72 years old; n = 1,609) and old-old (78 years or older; n = 1,085) adults from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen, who participated in up to five repeated measurements of cognitive abilities spanning 12 years. We used latent growth curve models to estimate cognitive levels and decline, as well as the correlations with initial personality trait levels and leisure activity engagement. In both groups, lower Neuroticism, higher Extraversion, and higher Openness levels were moderately associated with stronger engagement in all types of activities. Lower Neuroticism, higher Extraversion, and a more activity lifestyle were weakly to moderately associated with slower cognitive decline in the old-old age group. There, personality traits and activities explained 9.3% of the variance in cognitive decline after controlling for age, sex, education, and chronic diseases (which explained 9.0%). Taken together, this study provides further evidence for the connection between personality traits, activity engagement, and later cognitive decline in old age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Association between personality traits, leisure activities, and cognitive levels and decline across 12 years in older adults.

Considerable evidence suggests that language processing depends on memory processes, which are vulnerable to declines with aging. Yet little is known about the effects of language processing in the form of sustained literacy engagement on memory and other aspects of cognition. In the current study, adults (60–79 years of age) were randomly assigned to an 8-week program of leisure reading (n = 38) or to an active puzzle control (n = 38). Relative to the control, the experimental group showed differential improvement in verbal working memory and episodic memory. The experimental group also showed evidence of enhanced conceptual integration in sentence processing. These effects did not vary as a function of personality characteristics (e.g., openness) hypothesized to be compatible with literacy engagement. These findings support the idea that the exercise of cognitive capacities in the context of everyday life may offset age-related impairment in areas of cognition engaged by the activity, regardless of dispositional fit.

/pdf/the-effects-of-sustained-literacy-engagement-on-cognition-24073mjh.pdf

The Effects of Sustained Literacy Engagement on Cognition and Sentence Processing Among Older Adults

Language processing relies on both incremental processing in which ongoing input is used to activate meaning on the fly (immediacy) and segmental processing in which the mental representation is consolidated (integration). We review the history of this distinction and evidence for how these processes work together to balance quick processing of rapid input with consolidation, and consider how these processes change with age. 

Reading comprehension is both incremental and segmental—and the balance may shift with aging

Research with cognitive training for older adults has largely shown that benefits are confined to the skills that are directly practiced with little or no generalization (or "transfer") to other skills. However, investigations typically rely on pre-post designs in which the effects of training on non-practiced skills can only be revealed in the initial encounter with the novel task after training. The principle of mutualism suggests that growth in one cognitive skill may potentiate plasticity in related skills, such that transfer may only emerge with practice on the novel skill. We introduce a successive enrichment paradigm in which learning on a target skill (here, working memory (WM)) is examined as a function of earlier training experiences. Older adults were randomly assigned to one of four groups who trained on different combinations of tasks before training on a verbal WM task. Practice with any combination of WM tasks accelerated learning of the target task relative to a verbal decision speed control. Furthermore, those who first practiced multiple WM span tasks that were different from the target task showed larger pre- to posttest gain on the target WM task relative to those with prior exposure to only one different WM task or even the exact same WM task as the target. However, these effects only emerged with practice on the novel task. These data provide support for the mutualism principle — a conceptualization of transfer that can explain the emergence of the positive manifold of cognitive abilities, and offers promise for new pathways to promote late-life cognitive health. 

Looking for transfer in all the wrong places: How intellectual abilities can be enhanced through diverse experience among older adults

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Beyond “Use It or Lose It”: The Impact of Engagement on Cognitive Aging

The Effects of Sustained Literacy Engagement on Cognition and Sentence Processing Among Older Adults

Looking for transfer in all the wrong places: How intellectual abilities can be enhanced through diverse experience among older adults