Objectives: To examine whether the attenuation of racial disparities observed in physical health outcomes at older ages can be extended to cognitive outcomes in mid- and late-life samples.

Design: Cross-sectional associations between race and cognitive functioning were examined as a function of age.

Setting: The National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) and the Washington Heights-Inwood Columbia Aging Project (WHICAP).

Participants: Non-Hispanic African American or white individuals aged 40 and older (MIDUS; n = 3875, 10.5% African American) and non-Hispanic African American or white individuals aged 65 and older without a diagnosis of dementia (WHICAP; n = 2,729, 53.8% African American).

Measurements: Composite scores of executive functioning and episodic memory.

Results: Independent of main effects of age, birth cohort, sex, education, and chronic health conditions, significant interactions between age and race indicated that racial disparities in episodic memory and executive functioning were larger at younger than older age in both samples.

Conclusion: Attenuation of racial inequalities in older age can be extended to cognitive outcomes, which probably reflects selective survival. Research on cognitive disparities or on race-specific causes of cognitive outcomes in old age must incorporate corrections for selective survival if the goal is to identify causal predictors of cognitive outcomes rather than merely statistical predictors.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4883591PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jgs.14113DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

cognitive outcomes
16
racial disparities
12
african american
12
attenuation racial
8
extended cognitive
8
non-hispanic african
8
american white
8
white individuals
8
individuals aged
8
aged older
8

Similar Publications

Background: Nursing students experience significantly more stress related diseases when compared to non-nursing students, and the state of their mental health can result in short-term increased attrition rates and increased nursing shortages.

Purpose: A preexperimental pre-post study design was used to examine mental health and healthy behaviors among prenursing students.

Methods: Cohorts received the MINDSTRONG© program either in-person or virtually.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To improve students' understanding of physical education teaching concepts and help teachers analyze students' cognitive patterns, the study proposes an association learning-based method for understanding physical education teaching concepts using deep learning algorithms, which extracts image features related to teaching concepts using convolutional neural networks. Moreover, a neurocognitive diagnostic model based on hypergraph convolution is constructed to mine the data of students' long-term learning sequences and identify students' cognitive outcomes. The findings revealed that the highest accuracy of the association graph convolutional neural network was 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Vancomycin, an antibiotic with activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is frequently included in empiric treatment for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) despite the fact that MRSA is rarely implicated in CAP. Conducting polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing on nasal swabs to identify the presence of MRSA colonization has been proposed as an antimicrobial stewardship intervention to reduce the use of vancomycin. Observational studies have shown reductions in vancomycin use after implementation of MRSA colonization testing, and this approach has been adopted by CAP guidelines.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This randomized-controlled study evaluates the effectiveness of a newly developed social cognition rehabilitation intervention, the modified Social Cognition Individualized Activity Lab (mSoCIAL), in improving social cognition and clinical and functional outcomes of persons with schizophrenia recruited in two Italian sites: University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" in Naples and ASST Fatebenefratelli-Sacco in Milan. mSoCIAL consists of a social cognitive training module focusing on different domains of social cognition and of a narrative enhancement module. We assessed changes in social cognition, clinical characteristics and functional variables in patients with schizophrenia who participated in 10 weekly sessions of mSoCIAL or received treatment as usual (TAU).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is now diagnosed biologically. Since subjective cognitive decline (SCD) may indicate preclinical AD, assessing AD-biomarkers is crucial. We investigated cognitive and neurodegenerative trajectories in SCD over 24 months based on biomarker positivity, and evaluated the predictive value of plasma biomarkers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!