{"title":"High School Curriculum and Cognitive Function in the Eighth Decade of Life.","authors":"Sara M Moorman, Saber Khani","doi":"10.1097/WAD.0000000000000629","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Formal educational attainment, or years of schooling, has a well-established positive effect on cognitive health across the life course. We hypothesized that the content and difficulty of the curriculum influence this relationship, such that more challenging curricula in high school lead to higher levels of socioeconomic attainment in adulthood and, in turn, to better cognitive outcomes in older adulthood.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We estimated multilevel structural equation models (MSEMs) in data from 2,405 individuals who attended one of 1,312 US high schools in 1960 and participated in the Project Talent Aging Study in 2018.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A college preparatory curriculum and a greater number of semesters of math and science in high school were positively related to word recall and verbal fluency at an average age of 75. Effects were robust to controlling for adolescent cognitive ability, academic performance, socioeconomic background, and school characteristics.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>We discuss the implications of these findings for educational policy.</p>","PeriodicalId":7679,"journal":{"name":"Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders","volume":" ","pages":"235-240"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11849057/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1097/WAD.0000000000000629","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/8/8 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"CLINICAL NEUROLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: Formal educational attainment, or years of schooling, has a well-established positive effect on cognitive health across the life course. We hypothesized that the content and difficulty of the curriculum influence this relationship, such that more challenging curricula in high school lead to higher levels of socioeconomic attainment in adulthood and, in turn, to better cognitive outcomes in older adulthood.
Methods: We estimated multilevel structural equation models (MSEMs) in data from 2,405 individuals who attended one of 1,312 US high schools in 1960 and participated in the Project Talent Aging Study in 2018.
Results: A college preparatory curriculum and a greater number of semesters of math and science in high school were positively related to word recall and verbal fluency at an average age of 75. Effects were robust to controlling for adolescent cognitive ability, academic performance, socioeconomic background, and school characteristics.
Discussion: We discuss the implications of these findings for educational policy.
期刊介绍:
Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal directed to an audience of clinicians and researchers, with primary emphasis on Alzheimer disease and associated disorders. The journal publishes original articles emphasizing research in humans including epidemiologic studies, clinical trials and experimental studies, studies of diagnosis and biomarkers, as well as research on the health of persons with dementia and their caregivers. The scientific portion of the journal is augmented by reviews of the current literature, concepts, conjectures, and hypotheses in dementia, brief reports, and letters to the editor.