LOS ANGELES, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- More education is related to better cognitive performance in older adults, but a U.S. study finds the better-educated had bigger declines in word memory.
Adults over age 70 with higher levels of education forgot words at a greater rate than those with less education, according to a study by the University of Southern California.
"Even though we find in this research that those with higher education do better on mental status tests that look for dementia-like symptoms, education does not protect against more normal, age-related declines, like those seen on memory tests," said lead author Dawn Alley of the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted the research while a doctoral student at the USC Davis School.
The findings, published in Research on Aging, suggest that after age 70 educated adults may begin to lose the ability to use their schooling.
Researchers note that while the excess decline among those with more education is small, it is significant; however, they caution that other factors could account for the difference, such as the possibility that less-educated adults had a greater rate of decline earlier in life, before the data was collected.
