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8 Walking for Cognitive Function in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
- Andrew M Gradone, Vonetta M Dotson, Paul Verhaeghen
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, p. 323
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- Article
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Objective:
The world population is rapidly aging, and consequently, cognitive decline is becoming a larger public health crisis. There is no cure for dementia, but exercise has been consistently shown to improve cognitive function and slow cognitive decline in older adults. Given the many barriers to starting an exercise routine, walking is a particularly appealing intervention because it is safe, low-impact, and highly accessible (i.e., no upfront costs, no necessary equipment, and can be done almost anywhere and by anyone, given they are ambulatory). This abstract describes a systematic review and meta-analysis on peer-reviewed studies that examined randomized walking interventions for cognitive function in older adults.
Participants and Methods:The analyses included 1,286 older adults aged 55 and older (mean age = 73.1 years) across 19 studies that met inclusion criteria. All studies were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of walking interventions with pre-post cognitive outcome data. A total of eight cognitive domains were identified: global cognition, attention, processing speed, working memory, language, visuospatial skills, declarative memory, and executive function. Effect sizes, measured as net treatment gain, were extracted and converted to Hedges’ g. Three-level meta-analysis was used to account for dependency of effect sizes. Meta-regression analyses were used to examine whether the following variables moderated effect sizes: (a) cognitive status, (b) baseline activity level, (c) age, (d) walking intervention duration, and (e) duration of individual walking sessions.
Results:Participation in walking interventions significantly benefitted broad cognitive functioning (Hedges’ g = 0.19). The cognitive domains that specifically benefitted from walking were global cognition (g = 0.60), processing speed (g = 0.15), working memory (g = 0.22), declarative memory (g = 0.18), and executive functioning (g = 0.15). Cognitive status moderated this relationship, so that cognitively impaired older adults showed greater cognitive benefit from walking interventions. Baseline activity level did not moderate the effect; being sedentary at baseline yielded an effect size significantly greater than zero. The remaining moderator analyses were nonsignificant.
Conclusions:This systematic review and meta-analysis shows that walking interventions are associated with broad improvement in cognitive function in older adults. Walking benefits global cognition, processing speed, working memory, declarative memory, and executive function— the same cognitive domains that decline with normal cognitive aging. These findings are particularly important because walking is among the safest and most universally accessible forms of exercise. This will help healthcare providers make better lifestyle recommendations to their older patients. Future research should more rigorously examine potential moderating variables, such as walking intensity.
6 - Cognitive processes and ageing
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- By Paul Verhaeghen, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Edited by Ian Stuart-Hamilton, University of Glamorgan
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- Book:
- An Introduction to Gerontology
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 31 March 2011, pp 159-193
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Summary
OVERVIEW
This chapter presents a critical survey of cognitive changes in later life. It examines speed of processing, changes in cognitive skills, intelligence, assembled cognition and means of coping with cognitive limitations in later life.
Introduction
Let me start this chapter by letting you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as the psychology of normal ageing. Allow me to illustrate this. As I write this paragraph, our 2-month-old baby son is cooing in the background. Our baby obviously has a human mind, but this mind is very different from his parents', not just quantitatively (i.e. a temporarily dimmer version of the mash-up between my wife and me), but qualitatively as well (we have no idea what his cooing signifies beyond a quiet and quite brittle delight; likewise, he doesn't have a clue what we are telling him). There is a psychology of development, and it is very much needed: a child's mind is impenetrable to an adult. There is, however, no need for a separate psychology of ageing: older adults are just like young adults, except perhaps a little slower, a little less fazed by the hassles of life and a lot more mature. Put simply, changes over the adult lifespan tend to be quantitative, not qualitative.
7 - Aging and Varieties of Cognitive Control: A Review of Meta-Analyses on Resistance to Interference, Coordination, and Task Switching, and an Experimental Exploration of Age-Sensitivity in the Newly Identified Process of Focus Switching
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- By Paul Verhaeghen, Department of Psychology and Center for Health and Behavior, Syracuse University, 430 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, NY 13210, John Cerella, Department of Psychology and Center for Health and Behavior, Syracuse University, 430 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, NY 13210, Kara L. Bopp, Department of Psychology, Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323, Chandramallika Basak, Department of Psychology and Center for Health and Behavior, Syracuse University, 430 Huntington Hall, Syracuse, NY 13210
- Edited by Randall W. Engle, Georgia Institute of Technology, Grzegorz Sedek, Warsaw School of Social Psychology and Polish Academy of Sciences, Ulrich von Hecker, Cardiff University, Daniel N. McIntosh, University of Denver
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- Book:
- Cognitive Limitations in Aging and Psychopathology
- Published online:
- 20 May 2010
- Print publication:
- 17 October 2005, pp 160-189
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Summary
Adult age differences favoring the young have been demonstrated in a wide variety of tasks of fluid intelligence. Such age-sensitive tasks include (among many others): simple reaction times and choice reaction times, working memory tasks, tests of episodic memory, tests of spatial and reasoning abilities, mental rotation, and visual search performance (for exhaustive reviews, see e.g., Kausler, 1991; Salthouse, 1985, 1991; note that performance on other tasks, such as vocabulary measures, does not show negative age effects; e.g., Salthouse, 1991; Verhaeghen, 2003). The challenge for cognitive aging as a field is to identify the basic changes responsible for these declines. Given that the deficits are so widespread across the cognitive system, it is reasonable to assume that a limited number of basic mechanisms may explain a large number of the deficits.
It is no surprise, then, that much of the research on cognitive aging has centered on the investigation of the age effects of so-called cognitive primitives, that is, variables that influence the cognitive system without themselves being reducible to other psychological constructs. For a long time, the dominant theory in the field pertained to the influence of processing speed (Salthouse, 1991, 1996; for a meta-analysis, see Verhaeghen & Salthouse, 1997). This hypothesis views cognition as being driven by a processing rate and asserts that this rate is slower in older adults than in younger adults. More recently, the attention of the field has been drawn toward more process-specific accounts.