Multi-study coordinated meta-analysis of pulmonary functioning and cognitive ability.

A coordinated multi-study analysis of the longitudinal between cognition and grip strength in aging.

Introduction: This study examines the role of educational attainment, an indicator of cognitive reserve, on transitions in later life between cognitive states (normal Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), mild MMSE impairment, and severe MMSE impairment) and death. Methods: Analysis of six international longitudinal studies was performed using a coordinated approach. Multistate survival models were used to estimate the transition patterns via different cognitive states. Life expectancies were estimated.

Objectives: Although personality change is typically considered a symptom of dementia, some studies suggest that personality change may be an early indication of dementia. One prospective study found increases in neuroticism preceding dementia diagnosis. This study extends this research by examining trajectories of personality traits in additional longitudinal studies of aging.

Objectives. Grip strength and cognitive function reflect upper body muscle strength and mental capacities. Cross-sectional research has suggested that in old age these two processes are moderately to highly associated, and that an underlying common cause drives this association. Our aim was to synthesize and evaluate longitudinal research addressing whether changes in grip strength are associated with changes in cognitive function in healthy older adults.

OBJECTIVE: Cognitive performance shows a marked deterioration in close proximity to death, as postulated by the terminal decline hypothesis. The effect of education on the rate of terminal decline in the oldest people (i.e. persons 85+ years) has been controversial and not entirely understood. In the current study, we investigated the rate of decline prior to death with a special focus on the role of education and socioeconomic position, in two European longitudinal studies of ageing: the Origins of Variance in the Old-Old: Octogenarian Twins (OCTO-Twin) and the Newcastle 85+ study.

Background: Cognitive reserve was postulated to explain individual differences in susceptibility to ageing, offering apparent protection to those with higher education. We investigated the association between education and change in memory in early old age. 

This study examines the relationship between retirement and cognitive aging. We build on previous research by exploring how different specifications of retirement that reflect diverse pathways out of the labor market, including reason for leaving the pre-retirement job and duration spent in retirement, impact three domains of cognitive functioning. We further assess how early-life factors, including adolescent cognition, and mid-life work experiences, condition these relationships.

Objectives. Given theoretical and methodological advances that propose hypothesis about change in one or multiple processes, analytical methods for longitudinal data have been developed that provide researchers with various options for analyzing change over time. In this paper, we revisited several latent growth curve models that may be considered to answer questions about repeated measures of continuous variables, which may be operationalized as time-varying covariates or outcomes.

Social activity is one aspect of an active lifestyle and some evidence indicates it is related to preserved cognitive function in older adulthood. However, the potential mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. We investigate 4 potential mediational pathways through which social activity may relate to cognitive performance.

Objectives. The present study examined age differences among older adults in the daily co-occurrence of affect and its potential role in buffering the negative effects of health stressors.

Design. Participants were from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study (NAS) and included 249 young-old adults (age = 60–79 years, M=71.6) and 64 old-old adults (age = 80–89, M = 82.9) who completed questionnaires assessing stressors, physical health symptoms, and positive and negative affect on eight consecutive days.

Background: Education has been robustly associated with cognitive reserve and dementia, but not with the rate of cognitive aging, resulting in some confusion about the mechanisms of cognitive aging.

Objective: Personality traits predict both health behaviors and mortality risk across the life course. However, there are few investigations that have examined these effects in a single study. Thus, there are limitations in assessing if health behaviors explain why personality predicts health and longevity. Method: Utilizing 14-year mortality data from a national sample of over 6,000 adults from the Midlife in the United States Study, we tested whether alcohol use, smoking behavior, and waist circumference mediated the personality–mortality association.

Clinical and population research on dementia and related neurologic conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, faces several unique methodological challenges.

Objectives. To identify statistical methods for harmonization, the procedures aimed at achieving the comparability of previously collected data, which could be used in the context of summary data and individual participant data meta-analysis of cognitive measures.

Study Design and Setting. Environmental scan methods were used to conduct two reviews to identify (1) studies that quantitatively combined data on cognition and (2) general literature on statistical methods for data harmonization. Search results were rapidly screened to identify articles of relevance.

Although early adversity has been linked to worse mental and physical health in adulthood, few studies have investigated the pathways through which positive and negative dimensions of early experiences can jointly influence psychological well-being in later life. This study examined: (a) profiles of early experiences across multiple domains, (b) the relations of these profiles to hedonic and eudaimonic well-being in later life, and (c) whether midlife social support mediated these relations.

Personality traits have emerged as significant contributors to physical and mental health, as well as various economic outcomes including income. Few studies have explored whether personality is related to the frequency of days lost on the job due to physical or mental health issues, and the subsequent economic losses as a result. The current study bridged the health, economic, and personality variables to determine whether personality was associated with earnings lost due to work cut back days from poor physical or mental health.

Background: The investigation of multimorbidity and aging is complex and highly intertwined with aging-related changes in physical and cognitive capabilities, and mental health and is known to affect psychological distress and quality of life. Under these circumstances it is important to understand how the effects of chronic conditions evolve over time relative to aging-related and end-of-life changes.

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a widely used measure of emotional experience. The factor structure of the PANAS has been examined predominantly with cross-sectional designs, which fails to disaggregate within-person variation from between-person differences. There is still uncertainty as to the factor structure of positive and negative affect and whether they constitute 2 distinct independent factors.

This study examined the socioeconomic pathways linking partnership status to physical functioning, assessed using objective measures of late life physical functioning, including peak flow and grip strength. Using Wave 4 of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we ran multilevel models to examine the relationship between partnership status and physical function in late life, adjusting for social-network characteristics, socioeconomic factors, and health behaviours. We found a robust relationship between partnership status and physical function.

Age-related decline in processing speed has long been considered a key driver of cognitive aging. While the majority of empirical evidence for the processing speed hypothesis has been obtained from analyses of between-person age differences, longitudinal studies provide a direct test of within-person change. Using recent developments in longitudinal mediation analysis, we examine the speed—mediation hypothesis at both the within-and between-person levels in two longitudinal studies, Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA) and Origins of Variance in the Oldest-Old (OCTO-Twin).

Objectives. Evidence suggests a predictive association between emotion and mortality risk. However, no study has examined dynamic aspects of emotion in relation to mortality. This study used an index of emotional reactivity, defined as changes in positive or negative affect in response to daily stressors, to predict 10-year survival.

The current study examines the role of social contact intensity, cognitive activity, and depressive symptoms as within- and between-person mediators for the relationships between physical activity and cognitive functioning. All three types of mediators were considered simultaneously using multilevel structural equations modeling with longitudinal data. The sample consisted of 470 adults ranging from 79.37 to 97.92 years of age (M = 83.4; SD = 3.2) at the first occasion.

The terminal decline hypothesis states that in the proximity of death, an individual’s decline in cognitive abilities accelerates. We aimed at estimating the onset of faster rate of decline in global cognition using Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores from participants of the Cambridge City over 75 Cohort Study (CC75C), a U.K. population-based longitudinal study of aging where almost all participants have died.

Midlife hypertension is associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment in later life. The association between blood pressure (BP) in older ages and cognition is less clear. In this study we provide estimates of between-person and within-person associations of BP and cognition in a population-based sample (N = 382) followed from age 70 across 12 occasions over 30 years. Between-person associations refer to how individual differences in BP relates to individual differences in cognition.

The present study used a coordinated analyses approach to examine the association of physical activity and cognitive change in four longitudinal studies. A series of multilevel growth models with physical activity included both as a fixed (between-person) and time-varying (within-person) predictor of four domains of cognitive function (reasoning, memory, fluency, and semantic knowledge) was used. Baseline physical activity predicted fluency, reasoning and memory in two studies.

We illustrate the use of the parallel latent growth curve model using data from OCTO-Twin. We found a significant intercept-intercept and slope-slope association between processing speed and visuospatial ability. Within-person correlations among the occasion-specific residuals were significant, suggesting that the occasion-specific fluctuations around individual’s trajectories, after controlling for intraindividual change, are related between both outcomes.

Objectives. In this article, we discuss the importance of studying the relationship between health and cognitive function, and some of the methods with which this relationship has been studied.

Joint longitudinal-survival models are useful when repeated measures and event time data are available and possibly associated. The application of this joint model in aging research is relatively rare, albeit particularly useful, when there is the potential for nonrandom dropout. In this article we illustrate the method and discuss some issues that may arise when fitting joint models of this type.

Objective: The terminal cognitive decline hypothesis has been debated for almost 50 years. This hypothesis implies a change in rate of decline within an individual. Therefore, we examine the hypothesis from a within-person perspective using a time to death chronological structure.

Although the relationship between education and cognitive status is well-known, evidence regarding whether education moderates the trajectory of cognitive change in late life is conflicting. Early studies suggested that higher levels of education attenuate cognitive decline. More recent studies using improved longitudinal methods have not found that education moderates decline. Fewer studies have explored whether education exerts different effects on longitudinal changes within different cognitive domains.

Aging reflects ongoing transactions between context and person across many decades of life. Life course sociology is now central to investigations focused on the dynamic social context of aging, with its distinctive emphasis on long-term patterns in people's statuses, roles, and relationships. Recent advances in the understanding of the genome and its measurement have created new and exciting possibilities for studying the genetic basis of aging-related outcomes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Conceptual Issues at the Interface of Theory, Design, and Analysis, Analytic Approaches for Understanding Within‐Person Change and Variation Methodological Applications in Developmental and Aging Research, Integrative Data Analysis: Within‐Person Change in the Context of Cohort, Country, and Culture, Acknowledgments, References.

Aim: To evaluate previously developed classification models to make implementation in primary care possible and aid early identification of persons at risk for dementia. Methods: Data were drawn from the OCTO-Twin study. At baseline, 521 persons ≧80 years of age were nondemented, and for 387 a blood sample was available.

The distinction of between-person age differences from within-person age changes is necessary for understanding aging-related change processes. Although longitudinal studies are required to address issues relating to within-person change, most studies begin using age-heterogeneous samples and conclude using survival-heterogeneous samples. Given the numerous potential confounds associated with age-heterogeneous samples, careful treatment of between-person age differences is essential to obtain the correct inferences regarding within-person age change.

Replication of research findings across independent longitudinal studies is essential for a cumulative and innovative developmental science. Meta-analysis of longitudinal studies is often limited by the amount of published information on particular research questions, the complexity of longitudinal designs and the sophistication of analyses, and practical limits on full reporting of results. In many cases, cross-study differences in sample composition and measurements impede or lessen the utility of pooled data analysis.

Although elevated rates of parent psychosocial distress have been associated with child behavior and emotional problems, little is known about the nature of this relationship over time. This study followed an epidemiological cohort of children and adolescents over 11 years with 4 waves of data collection. Within this cohort, complete data were available on 238 mothers and their children. Behavior and emotional problems were assessed using the DBC, maternal mental health with the GHQ. Multivariate growth curve modelling was used to evaluate the commonality of individual change patterns.

As the authors describe in this chapter, numerous calls have been made for increased collaboration as a means to focus developmental research on within-person processes. The authors highlight and summarize some examples of collaborative and coordinated research, and the authors elaborate on some fundamental ideas for implementing strategies for maximizing our understanding of within person aging-related changes.