PURPOSE IN LIFE PROTECTS AGAINST COGNITIVE DECLINE AMONG OLDER ADULTS

Abstract Objective: This study examined whether having a sense of purpose in life protects against cognitive decline among older adults and whether purpose in life moderates the relationship between selected risk factors (age, sex, and race/ethnicity) and cognitive abilities. Methods: This was a longitudinal analysis of existing secondary data of adults (N = 11,557) aged 50 or older using the 2006 −2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. The study measured purpose in life, cognitive functioning score, and various covariates. Results: Growth curve modeling revealed that, after adjusting for covariates, purpose in life was positively associated with participants’ total cognition scores. Purpose in life significantly moderated the relationship between age and race/ethnicity and cognitive decline. Further, purpose in life was a protective factor against cognitive decline for those who were older and black. There was no significant interaction between purpose in life and sex. Conclusion: Having a purposeful life protects against cognitive decline in older adults, and the associations varied by age and race/ethnicity, but not by sex. Potential ways to increase purpose in life are discussed in a clinical context.

(n_cancer=47, n_non-cancer=105, age range: 40-64 years, M=52.13 years).Participants completed three cognitive tasks measuring working memory, executive functioning, and processing speed up to five times per day for 14 days.Results indicated no mean-level differences in cognitive performance on the three tasks between cancer survivors and those without cancer history (p's>.05).Unexpectedly, women without cancer history showed more variability than survivors on working memory but not on the other two tasks.Across both groups, those without a college education performed worse on executive functioning (B=-0.05,SE=0.03, p<.05) and working memory (B=0.94,SE=0.36, p<.05) compared to those that completed college.Additionally, older age was associated with slower processing speed (B=31.67,SE=7.44, p<.001).In sum, this study did not find mean-level group differences in cognitive functioning between cancer survivors and age-matched women without a history of cancer.Contrary to hypotheses, those without a history of cancer were more variable on working memory.Results suggested similarities in cognitive functioning in the two samples and that education and age are important predictors of cognitive functioning independent of cancer history.We examined the within-person relationship between systolic blood pressure (SBP) and cognition and whether this association is moderated by hypertension status and stress level.Analysis was conducted on 50 (39 women and 11 men) community-dwelling African Americans ranging in age from 50 to 80 years (M = 65.40,SD = 8.53).Participants' blood pressure and cognition (i.e., executive function, memory, perceptual speed, inductive reasoning, constructional praxis, and language) was assessed on 8 different occasions over a 2-week time period.Stress was measured at baseline using the Elderly Life Stress Inventory.Findings show on days systolic blood pressure increased above an individual's average level, their memory performance also tended to improve on that day.A significant 3-way interaction was further observed; such that on occasions when an individual's systolic blood pressure was above his or her personal average, their executive functioning performance (i.e., Letter Fluency test) was significantly better, particularly for participants who on average had a high SBP (or were hypertensive) and reported a history of high stress.These results suggest that higher levels of blood pressure are related to better cognitive performance among middle age to older African Americans.These counterintuitive findings may be attributed to the inclusion of a selective sample of resilient African Americans who have survived despite having adverse health conditions.This association may also arise from stress induced high effort coping, which is needed to perform well on cognitive tasks but also increases blood pressure.

CHANGES IN COGNITIVE FUNCTION AMONG SENIOR AMERICANS: TRENDS AND DIFFERENCES BY RACE
Keqing Zhang, 1 Wei Zhang, 1 and Yanyan Wu 1 , 1. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States Improvements in health and increase in life expectancy have contributed to the increasing proportion of older population over the past century.It is estimated that by 2050, the number of older adults with cognitive impairments in the United States will increase by 2.5-4 fold, while agespecific rates remain constant.This paper uses data from 10 waves (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014) of the Health and Retirement Study (N= 33213) to crystalize the trends in cognitive function changes and cognitive impairment rates in a nationally representative sample of older adults.OLS and logistic regressions are used to estimate the trends and determine the contribution of sociodemographic variables to decreasing trends in the prevalence of cognitive impairment over time.Results show that with the increase of age, the cognitive function of older adults decline in all races, after adjustment for age, gender, education, and other sociodemographic factors.Also, the annual decline rate of cognitive function is larger for African Americans and Hispanic Americans, while smaller for white and other races.A further investigation of the possibility of cognitive impairment reveals a different scenario: as individual ages, the Hispanic are the least likely to suffer from cognitive impairment, followed by the white, other and black.Improvements in educational level contribute to declines in cognitive impairment across all races, particular the Hispanic Americans.Race-specific findings suggest that future research need to take into account the racial diversity and possibly cultural influences when examining the cognitive functions of older adults.

PURPOSE IN LIFE PROTECTS AGAINST COGNITIVE DECLINE AMONG OLDER ADULTS
Giyeon Kim, 1 Su Hyun Shin, 2 Monica Scicolone, 2 and Patricia A. Parmelee 2 , 1. Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea, Republic of, 2. The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States Objective: This study examined whether having a sense of purpose in life protects against cognitive decline among older adults and whether purpose in life moderates the relationship between selected risk factors (age, sex, and race/ethnicity) and cognitive abilities.Methods: This was a longitudinal analysis of existing secondary data of adults (N = 11,557) aged 50 or older using the 2006 −2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study.The study measured purpose in life, cognitive functioning score, and various covariates.Results: Growth curve modeling revealed that, after adjusting for covariates, purpose in life was positively associated with participants' total cognition scores.Purpose in life significantly moderated the relationship between age and race/ethnicity and cognitive decline.Further, purpose in life was a protective factor against cognitive decline for those who were older and black.There was no significant interaction between purpose in life and sex.Conclusion: Having a purposeful life protects against cognitive decline in older adults, and the associations varied by age and race/ethnicity, but not by sex.Potential ways to increase purpose in life are discussed in a clinical context.

THE ROLE OF PRINT EXPOSURE IN SUPPORTING COGNITIVE ABILITY AMONG OLDER ADULTS Xiaomei Liu, 1 Elizabeth A L Stine-Morrow, 1 and Giavanna S. McCall 1 , 1. Beckman Institute and Educational Psychology, Urbana, Illinois, United States
Reading is an activity that has long been thought to have beneficial effects on cognitive ability, however, little is known about the effects of long-term reading engagement on cognition among older adults.Pre-test data are reported from an ongoing study of the effects of a literacy-based intervention on cognition among older adults.Participants (66.7% female) ranging from 60 to 79 years of age with education ranging from 11 to 19 years were administered a battery of measures, including print exposure checklists, which are objective indices for assessing long-term readingrelated activities, as well as cognitive assessments.A composite measure of print exposure was based on the Author Recognition Test, Magazine Recognition Test, Non-fiction Author Recognition Test, and Fiction Recognition Test (alpha=.92).Cognition was assessed in a comprehensive battery, including measures of verbal ability, working memory, episodic memory, and verbal fluency (alpha=.83).Print exposure was marginally related to self-reported time spent reading (r=.27,p.4), suggesting criterion-related validity.Age-related declines were not evident for any of our cognitive measures in this sample, t(46)'s.8, and there was a modest increase in reading engagement with age (r=.36, p=.01).Controlling for verbal ability, print exposure had a significant positive influence on global cognition (standardized beta=0.38,p=.01); however, these effects were specific to episodic memory and verbal fluency, t(46)>2, p<.05.These preliminary findings are suggestive of selective cognitive benefits from continued literacy engagement in reading in later life.

ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION AND MEMORY: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF RECIPROCAL IMPACTS ACROSS OLD AGE Oliver K. Schilling 1 , 1. Department of Psychological Ageing Research, Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
Research on the association of alcohol consumption with cognitive aging revealed mixed evidence: Whereas a u-shaped relationship has been found in many studies, suggesting that low to moderate alcohol consumption predicts more favorable cognitive outcomes than abstinence, other findings suggest that alcohol is a more linearly related risk factor for cognitive decline.These inconsistencies may partly be due to methodological variation in the statistical modeling of intraindividual changes in both, alcohol consumption and cognition across old age.The present study analyzed longitudinal change in and the mutual effects between alcohol consumption habits and verbal episodic memory (word list recall), using vector autoregressive (VAR) mixed models with nonlinear cross-lagged effects.Data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing was examined, including N=13388 aged 50+ (M=67.6,SD=9.25; 54.7% female), assessed at up to eight occasions with two-year follow-up intervals (2002/3-2016/17).The self-reported one-year frequency of alcohol drinking days (ADD) served as indicator of alcohol consumption.Basically, ADD predicted follow-up memory performance in a reverse u-shaped fashion, indicating best memory performance after moderate ADD, compared with both ends of the ADD continuum (i.e., drinking never vs. every day).Considering moderators, most notably age did not interact with cross-lagged effects, suggesting that those observed across an older age-range were not more (or less) vulnerable to effects of alcohol consumption on memory performance.Thus, this study adds further support for non-detrimental, if not beneficial, effects of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive aging -regarding in particular age-related loss of episodic memory.Music playing is an involved activity, activating many areas of the brain and relying on integration of multiple cognitive processes simultaneously.Older adult musicians have been found to experience some cognitive benefits compared to non-musicians, seemingly related to their musical training.However, we still do not understand what factors of musical training may be driving these differences.The current study sought to isolate age of acquisition from "dose" of playing (i.e., amount of time spent playing) to explore music learning as a skill acquired during a sensitive period.Participants (n=48) were middle aged and older adults who self-reported on musical experiences, demographics, and underwent extensive neuropsychological assessment of all major domains.The sample was divided into Early Age of Acquisition (≤9 years old), Late Age of Acquisition (>9), and Non-Musicians.Results showed that musicians who began formal training at the age of 9 or younger, had significantly higher scores on tests of verbal memory (California Verbal Learning Test -II: Immediate Recall -p = 0.04, partial η2 = 0.14, Short-Delay Free Recall -p = 0.03, partial η2 = 0.16, Long-Delay Free Recall -p = 0.03, partial η2 = 0.15).Results are discussed in the context of a sensitive period for acquiring musical education, and implications of these results on cognitive aging.

EFFECTS OF OBESITY ON EXECUTIVE FUNCTION AND MEMORY IN MIDDLE-AGED AND OLDER ADULTS
Andrew J. Fiscella, 1 and Ross Andel 1 , 1. University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States Obesity has been linked to multiple conditions including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and metabolic syndrome.While the relationship between obesity and these diseases is well-established, the relationship between obesity and changes in cognitive function is less clear.This study examined the effects of overweight and obese status on performance Gamaldo, 2 Jason C. Allaire, 3 and Keith E. Whitfield 1 , 1. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, United States, 2. Penn State, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States, 3. NC State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States Jessica V. Strong, 1 William Milberg, 1 Regina McGlinchey, 1 and Elizabeth Leritz 1 , 1. VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, Massachusetts, United States