Preserved Executive Control in Ageing: The Role of Literacy Experience
Metadata
Show full item recordAuthor
Pérez Muñoz, Ana IsabelEditorial
MDPI
Materia
Healthy ageing Cognitive decline Executive control Literacy experience Cognitive reserve
Date
2022-10-14Referencia bibliográfica
Pérez, A.I.; Fotiadou, G.; Tsimpli, I. Preserved Executive Control in Ageing: The Role of Literacy Experience. Brain Sci. 2022, 12, 1392. [https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12101392]
Sponsorship
European Social Fund (ESF); European Commission IDAR/2656; Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF); MSCA-COFUND Athenea3i Grant 754446Abstract
Healthy ageing is commonly accompanied by cognitive decline affecting several domains
such as executive control, whereas certain verbal skills remain relatively preserved. Interestingly,
recent scientific research has shown that some intellectual activities may be linked to beneficial effects,
delaying or even alleviating cognitive decline in the elderly. Thirty young (age: M = 23) and thirty
old (age: M = 66) adults were assessed in executive control (switching) and literacy experience (print
exposure). First, we tried to confirm whether healthy ageing was generally associated with deficits
in switching by looking at mixing cost effects, to then investigate if individual differences in print
exposure explained variation in that age-related mixing costs. Both accuracy and reaction times
mixing cost indexes demonstrated larger cost in old (but not in young) adults when switching from
local to global information. More importantly, this cost effect was not present in old adults with
higher print exposure (reaction times). Our findings suggest literacy experience accumulated across
the life-span may act as a cognitive reserve proxy to prevent executive control decline.