A cross‐cultural perspective on aging and memory: Comparisons between Bangladesh and Sweden

Abstract

Most studies on cognitive aging have been conducted in high-income countries (mainly on Western populations). The main aim of this study was to compare the relative importance of predictors of episodic and semantic memory performance in older people (≥60 years) from Bangladesh (n = 400) and Sweden (n = 1,098). Hierarchical regression models were used in order to study the importance of some commonly used predictors in the two countries. A main finding was that variations in age did not have much impact on episodic and semantic memory performance in Bangladesh. Instead, sex was a strong predictor for semantic memory performance. In Sweden this pattern was reversed. In the Western world, chronological age is believed to be strongly associated with memory performance in cross-sectional studies, particularly in people greater than 60 years of age. This study indicates that the difference between the two countries (in relative importance of the predictors included in this study) is mainly due to the fact that years of education is connected to age in the Western world but to sex in Bangladesh. It remains to be examined whether earlier selective survival is also responsible for the relative absence of cognitive age differences in Bangladesh.

Different Context but Similar Cognitive Structures: Older Adults in Rural Bangladesh

“…It appears in general to have a strong impact on absolute levels of cognitive performance, which has been demonstrated also in other studies (c.f. Sternäng, et al, 2012). The correlation between age and literacy was, however, close to zero.…”

“…The perhaps most striking difference between this study and previous comparable work is the inclusion of sixty percent illiterates. We think that an important reason for performing studies of, for example, the structure of cognitive functions in very different (compared to Europe or USA) cultures is that the relative importance of background variables may vary (e.g., Sternäng, et al, 2012), representing the possibility of different causal mechanisms across cultures and/or effects due to inherent differences in the variables at focus (Zsembik & Peek, 2001). The present study shows that such variations are however not exerting a major impact on a very fundamental prerequisite in cognitive aging research: The structure of long-term declarative memory.…”

“…One important factor behind women's poorer overall cognitive performance is probably the notable differences in lifestyle between women and men in Bangladesh (see Herlitz & Kabir, 2006;Sternäng, et al, 2012). Older men and women have in general lived very different lives in Bangladesh.…”

“…Age was chosen because of our focus on cognitive aging. There is probably a selection effect before 60 years of age because of great pressure from socioeconomic situations and living conditions (see Sternäng, Kabir, Hamadani, & Wahlin, 2012), which may have an impact on the outcomes.…”

“…Literacy is an education variable, and the structure of individual differences in cognition might be education-related (see Whitfield, Allaire, Gamaldo, & Bichsel, 2010). Literacy is important in this context because it is closely associated with cognitive performance (e.g., Herlitz & Kabir, 2006;Sternäng, et al, 2012), and illiteracy is highly prevalent in the elderly adult population of Bangladesh.…”