Cognitive Reserve and Its Effect in Older Adults on Retrieval of Proper Names, Logo Names and Common Nouns

Abstract

Previous studies showed that high Cognitive Reserve (CR, years of education and experience and knowledge acquired in life) is correlated with language proficiency as measured with vocabulary size, verbal analogy, and semantic processing. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between CR and the ability in retrieving different categories of words: Proper Names, Logo Names, and Common Nouns. The hypothesis is that CR contributes more in retrieving Common Nouns and Logo Names which are highly semantically interconnected, than retrieving Proper Names which are pure referring expressions. Forty-six Italian healthy older adults underwent the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and their performances spanned from low to high global cognitive profile. They were also administered a picture naming task for Proper Names, Logo Names and Common Nouns. Latency and Accuracy were recorded. CR was measured with the Cognitive Reserve Index (CRI) questionnaire which provides a measure of education, working time activities, and leisure time activities. Participants were significantly faster and more accurate in name retrieval when CR was high. CRI and MoCA as interaction terms predicted naming Latency with a stronger effect of CRI when the global cognitive profile was in the low range. The effect of CRI on Accuracy was lower for Proper Names than for Common Nouns and Logo Names, which did not differ from each other. Our results show that name retrieval Accuracy can be predicted by CR, significantly more in the case of Logo Names and Common Nouns than in the case of Proper Names. As Proper Names have scarce semantic interconnections and are arbitrarily assigned to unique individuals, they are not much influenced by CR. Although Logo Names are also arbitrarily assigned to their bearers, they can be conceptually categorized and thus influenced by reserve. The weak relationship between Proper Names and CR might suggest a proper name task as a useful tool to detect early signs of dementia, in particular for persons with high CR.

Cognitive reserve estimated with a life experience questionnaire outperforms education in predicting performance on MoCA: Italian normative data

“…MoCA is, to date, used worldwide by psychologists, neurologists, geriatricians, occupational and speech therapists (e.g., O'Driscoll & Shaikh, 2017) and serves for a general screening, usually followed by a more detailed neuropsychological assessment of the cognitive profile. Initially created to distinguish among individuals with MCI, Alzheimer's disease, and healthy controls, now widely used for assessing the cognitive profile of healthy participants (Chen et al, 2020;Montemurro et al, 2019a), populations with pathological aging (Roalf et al, 2013) and neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's Disease (Biundo et al, 2014;Montemurro et al, 2019b), Multiple Sclerosis (e.g., Al-Sharman et al, 2019), and Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Rosca et al, 2019).…”

Global Examination of Mental State: An open tool for the brief evaluation of cognition

“…Another important point is that scores of screenings, as is the case for all cognitive tests, have so far only been adjusted for age, education, and sex (Strauss et al., 2006 ), although other variables may be at play and influence cognition (e.g., sociobehavioral or socioeconomic factors Fratiglioni et al., 2004 ; Livingston et al., 2017 ; Mondini et al., 2022 ; Ward et al., 2015 ). From this perspective, education is only one component of the concept of Cognitive Reserve (CR, Stern, 2003 ), which is well recognized as a comprehensive measure of abilities and knowledge acquired during life (Stern & Barulli, 2009 ), and as a modulator of cognitive performance (Lojo‐Seoane et al., 2018 ; Mitchell et al., 2012 ; Montemurro et al., 2019 ; Steffener & Stern, 2012 ). CR is considered a protective factor against major neurocognitive decline (Mondini et al., 2022 ), whereas in other pathologies, CR shows a positive effect on recovery after brain damage (Hindle et al., 2014 ; Menardi et al., 2020 ; Nunnari et al., 2014 ).…”

Cognitive reserve estimated with a life experience questionnaire outperforms education in predicting performance on MoCA: Italian normative data

“…MoCA is, to date, used worldwide by psychologists, neurologists, geriatricians, occupational and speech therapists (e.g., O'Driscoll & Shaikh, 2017) and serves for a general screening, usually followed by a more detailed neuropsychological assessment of the cognitive pro le. Initially created to distinguish among individuals with MCI, Alzheimer's disease, and healthy controls, now widely used for assessing the cognitive pro le of healthy participants (Chen et al, 2020;Montemurro, Mondini, Crovace, & Jarema, 2019), populations with pathological aging (Roalf et al, 2013) and neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's Disease (Biundo et al, 2014;, Multiple Sclerosis (e.g., Al-Sharman et al, 2019), and Human immunode ciency virus (HIV) (Rosca, Albarqouni, & Simu, 2019).…”