Education during childhood to early adulthood does not only affect the opportunities of one's future career but is a factor for health and longevity. A recent study shows how formal education is directly linked to cognitive functions for the rest of one's life.
The paper in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest is a collaboration between several universities. A key to cognitive health later in life is based on how far people have attained in school.
'The total amount of formal education that people receive is related to their average levels of cognitive functioning throughout adulthood,' explained Elliot Tucker-Drob from the University of Texas. 'However, it is not appreciably related to their rates of aging-related cognitive declines.'
The authors described two classes of cognitive abilities; the first one being fluid abilities which include memory, abstract reasoning, and psychomotor speed. Second is the crystallized abilities that are acquired from people's sociocultural environment. This includes literacy, vocabulary, knowledge of current events and history, and individual skills.
Education and Cognitive Ability
During the study, the team analyzed data gathered in the past 20 years. Previous studies showed the effect that education attainment has on levels of cognitive function and how it changes through time. They also assessed what factors in education led to dementia.
Through time, as the brain ages, cognitive abilities naturally decline. But illnesses like dementia, more commonly classified as Alzheimer's disease, affect more than a single cognitive domain which hinders people from doing everyday tasks.
The common hypothesis about education and brain capacity is that formal education can protect people against cognitive decline. Instead, the researchers discovered that those to attain higher levels of education have the tendency to decline from higher peak levels of cognitive function. For example, one study 'concluded that greater education is associated with slower declines in cognitive performance,' but there was a lack of evidence of how education is linked to age-related cognitive decline.
The decline can mean a longer period of cognitive impairment and then eventually falling into the functional threshold much later in life. At this point, cognitive decline such as amnesia or severe neurological diseases begins to interfere with daily life.
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Predicting Dementia
'Individuals vary in their rates of aging-related cognitive declines, but these individual differences are not appreciably related to educational attainment," said Martin Lövdén of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
More than implementing strict laws on education, the study suggests that formal education can be developed to help improve cognitive ability in the long run. 'This message may be particularly relevant as governments decide if, when, and how to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such decisions could have consequences for many decades to come," said Tucker-Drob
Previous studies showed that during the early 1990s, those with low educational attainment had a higher risk of getting dementia beyond 65 years old. Alongside biomarkers, the authors wrote, 'education is a robust predictor of age of dementia onset that has a sizable effect.'
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