Daily activity diversity and daily working memory in community-dwelling older adults.

Abstract

Objective: Cross-sectional and long-term longitudinal studies have shown that engagement in diverse activities benefits cognitive performance in older age, but it is unknown whether the beneficial effect holds within persons on a daily basis. This study examines the within-person association between activity diversity and working memory on the same day and its time-lagged directionality between days. It also examines the effects of potential moderators on the within-person association, including age, education, processing speed, and crystallized intelligence, to understand who may benefit more from daily activity diversity. Method: We examined smartphone-based ambulatory assessment data from 150 community-dwelling older adults (aged 65–91 years) from Switzerland. Participants reported their present activity and completed a working memory task (i.e., numerical updating) seven times per day over 15 days. Activity diversity was calculated on a daily level and scores of working memory were averaged within a day. Age, education, processing speed, and crystallized intelligence were assessed in the laboratory at baseline. Results: Multilevel models showed that, within persons, higher daily activity diversity was positively associated with higher daily working memory. Moreover, the prior day’s greater activity diversity led to that day’s higher working memory, but not vice versa. There were no moderating effects of age, education, and crystallized intelligence, but partial evidence of a moderating effect of processing speed. Conclusions: Our results on within-person concurrent and time-lagged associations between daily activity diversity and daily working memory strengthen the existing evidence on the beneficial effect of activity diversity on older adults’ cognitive performance. Results are discussed in the context of cognitive reserve theory.

GPS-Derived Daily Mobility and Daily Well-Being in Community-Dwelling Older Adults

“…In particular, the positive associations between life satisfaction, area traveled (quantified by the convex hull), and diversity of locations visited (measured by entropy) map onto recent findings from younger adult samples using GPS sensors [35,36]. Moreover, our findings on the associations of diversity of activity locations with life satisfaction points to the potential benefits of exposure to novel and diverse experiences, which have been shown by studies that examined older adults' diversity of daily activities [59,60] and diversity of land use (i.e., nature and built environment) in their residential areas [61]. Overall, our findings are consistent with previous studies that showed positive associations between time out of home and well-being in older adults [23,30].…”

The short-term effects of activity engagement on working memory performance in older age.

“…Further, our study design, constraining responses to a single activity type at each moment, may have missed the moments when participants engaging in multiple activities. Afterall, everyday activity engagement can be characterized by not only the presence or absence of a given activity (i.e., frequency) but also in terms of the diversity of activity types (Luo et al, 2023; Urban-Wojcik et al, 2022). Such a perspective, albeit beyond the scope of the present article, promises to provide a fruitful extension of the present work.…”

The Mediating Role of Affective States in Short-Term Effects of Activity Engagement on Working Memory in Older Age

“…A recent ambulatory assessment study from our lab explicitly examined the duration of the time-lagged association between a bout of activity engagement and working memory performance in older adults [9]. More specifically, with seven assessments per day over 2 weeks, the study examined if activity engagement related to working memory concurrently, over one measurement point, or longer.…”

“…More specifically, with seven assessments per day over 2 weeks, the study examined if activity engagement related to working memory concurrently, over one measurement point, or longer. Results showed that engagement in sociocognitive activities was associated with better working memory performance 6 h later, and engagement in passive leisure activities was associated with worse working memory performance 6 h later – and the effects completely faded out within 8 h [9]. In explaining the observed time-lagged activity effects on working memory, we hypothesized an emotional pathway where affective states triggered from activity engagement may have needed several hours to unfold their influence on cognitive performance.…”

“…Most existing theories and studies have focused on concurrent associations between activity engagement, affective states, and cognitive performance but have rarely examined time-lagged associations. Our recent study indicating a short-term time-lagged effect of activity engagement on working memory over hours [9] hinted that affective states, if they indeed played a role, could have taken effect somewhen in the course over hours. As the first exploratory step toward establishing knowledge about a potential underlying mechanism behind the short-term effect of activity engagement on working memory, research is needed to examine if affective states are involved in the time-lagged process over hours.…”